“Speed-the-Plow’’ has a production history as colorful as the events onstage. It twice created a stir on Broadway: first, at its premiere in 1988, when Madonna made her stage debut amid great hullabaloo (with costars Joe Mantegna, and Ron Silver), and again last December, when Jeremy Piven abruptly left the cast because of elevated levels of mercury in his blood, which he attributed to the excessive consumption of fish. “My understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer,’’ Mamet cracked at the time.
In the snappy New Rep production, Robert Pemberton plays Bobby Gould, the newly appointed head of production at a film studio. As Gould is sitting at his desk one day, rolling his eyes while giving a “courtesy read’’ to “The Bridge,’’ a turgid piece of literary fiction about radiation and the Meaning of Life, in walks a lower-ranking producer, Charlie Fox (Gabriel Kuttner), with some marvelous news.
Fox has uncovered an old action-caper script from a studio file, gotten it into the hands of a major movie star named Doug Brown, and Brown loved it! He wants to make the film! The script is preposterous, of course. Here is how Gould sums it up after hearing Fox’s outline: “. . . a buddy film, a prison film, Douggie Brown, blah, blah, some girl . . . action, blood, a social theme. . .’’
And dollars. Lots and lots of dollars. Fox, who is badly in need of a break, is jubilant. But beneath his excitement is a discernible undercurrent of resentment toward the more successful Gould. Unable to resist tweaking him, Fox bets Gould $500 that he cannot seduce Karen (Aimee Doherty), Gould’s temporary secretary. Gould takes the bet. He asks Karen to read “The Bridge,’’ then come to his house that night and give him a full report on whether it would make a good movie. She does so, which is when things get complicated. A seduction does indeed take place, but who seduces whom? And which movie will get made, the sure-thing blockbuster or the art film?
