TonyVincent sees SPEED-THE-PLOW

[TonyVincent]

Posted: 10/9/08 at 9:51am

Last night, 10/8, I saw SPEED-THE-PLOW. While an entertaining night at the theater, and while Raul is his usual fantastic self, the production suffers from typecasting, and still needs the preparation and work of more previews.

The play itself was enjoyable, although I'm beginning to realize I'm not a huge fan of David Mamet as a playwright. He seems to pride himself on quick-paced dialogue, but IMO, it's not intelligent dialogue like Aaron Sorkin, it's all about misdirection and procrastination, delaying the point by adding in 10 lines of back and forth meaningless banter. "Wanna know what I know?" "What?" "You wanna know?" "Yeah." "I bet you wanna know." "What?" . Yeah, it's a device and it has its merits, I get it. It just frustrates me. His play could say just as much in half the time which a quarter the lines. The superfluous dialogue, although illustrating the characters, is not economical.

For the actors: Raul is very enjoyable and was well prepared. Moss and Piven seem woefully typecast, though. Piven plays Ari Gold for most of the show, and Moss plays the Mad Men secretary for a decent portion of the time, too. Sure, their characters change and develop, but in the end they're the same people with the same ambitions. I'm sure fans of their respective shows will enjoy seeing the same old character (my roommate, a big Entourage fan, took this last paragraph as an endorsement), but I was hoping for something more.

Additionally, Piven is clearly not comfortable with his lines yet. He messed up about once every five minutes (I've never seen the show before, and I found it obvious). I'd say about 20 times in total: flubbed lines he had to start over, saying things that didn't make sense (e.g., "This [book] won't make a good book!" when he meant movie). I know it's not officially open yet, but this detracted from the performance. He also has one of the most vain bios I've ever read. Apparently, he's "starred" in movies I didn't even notice he was in when I saw them.

So, in summary, an enjoyable night, but I'm glad I paid student rush. I meant to see something else and put this off for a couple weeks, but the other show had no rush left. Wish I had waited.

6/10 rating

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 10/9/08 at 10:53am

Agreed. He messed up numerous times when I saw it, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because it was the second preview. I didn't really care for any of the actors. I mean, Raul was good, but his performance didn't seem to mesh with the others. And the direction just seemed haphazard.

[TonyVincent]

Posted: 10/9/08 at 12:20pm

Forgot to add: overplaying the word "maverick" was funny the first time. The second and third times, though were just overkill.

Did anyone else, when Raul keeps saying "Bob!" "Hey, Bob!" "Bob!" at the beginning start thinking "Bobby! Bobby! Bobby, come on over for dinner!"

[little_sally]

Posted: 10/9/08 at 12:26pm

Thanks for the review! I'm still debating whether to see this one or not.