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The Review - THEATRE by HOWARD LOXTON
Published: 21 February 2008

Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in Speed the Plow

A plot with holes for Spacey to fill

SPEED THE PLOW
Old Vic

TO the office of newly elevated studio executive Bobby Gould (Jeff Goldblum) – the decorator’s ladders still there, the files not yet in their cabinets – comes old mate Charles Fox (Kevin Spacey), a producer who has just been offered what seems a sure-fire sensation-driven prison movie featuring male rape with a bankable star already part of the package.
Enter Bobby’s new temporary secretary whom he bets he can bed. He gives her a book to report on by evening. It’s a “courtesy read” before he turns it down, and just an excuse to get her around to his place. But the candle-lit seduction scene sees her convincing him that its theme – that gadgets and technology are creating radiation that makes the world decay, all part of God’s plan to bring an end to this world – should be put on the screen.
Charlie won’t accept that his movie is being dropped for this one. They don’t just have a verbal sparring match. Charlie really puts the boot in. Bobby ends up bloodied when he should be rushing off to a meeting with the studio head. Charlie’s violence even has a hint of the lover spurned – are we intended to take his cry of “I love him too” as more than American hyperbole?
It’s a simple plot, flawed by the implausibility of the book as a movie, except that dramatist David Mamet is offering a satire on Tinseltown values, the industry’s rat race and on capitalist mores.
Matthew Warchus’s fast- tempo production means you have to be on your toes to keep up with its helter-skelter bravura and the pace of delivery.
Laura Michelle Kelly keeps you guessing as to whether the temp is a naïve idealist or a clever operator but she needs to speak up a little if she wants the over-40s to understand what she’s saying.
But see it for the manic Kevin Spacey as Charlie, so hyper you are waiting for his battery to run down, and the elongated streak of Jeff Goldblum’s Bobby, whose excitement breaks through his executive façade to break into a soft-shoe shuffle. They make a marvellous double act, frenetically disguising their own insecurity.
Until April 26
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0870 040 0046

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