Speed-the-Plow
Few playwrights fling as much malice toward women as does David Mamet. Yet his plays generally revile them from a male point of view, rarely capitalizing on the ugliness that can manifest between women — especially in the workplace, where codified inferiority and perceived competition breeds more adversaries than allies. Now, director Joe Bailey takes a radically different tactic with an all-female version of Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow. With biting performances that nurture curious discoveries, this swaggering one-act Hollywood fable at the Ringwald hungrily gnaws at the vituperative potential of a bitch-eat-bitch world.
The story — as intact as the names in this telling — provides just enough context for the various characters to bounce their principles and egos off each other. As Bobby Gould (Jamie Warrow) luxuriates in her first day as head of production at a major Hollywood studio, her “courtesy read” of a tedious novel is interrupted by the room-filling combustion of longtime associate Charlie Fox (Leah Smith). Charlie is armed with a bankable script, an unattainable star attached, and a 24-hour window in which to ink the deal; the two speak each other’s language well enough to know this is a career-making project. The ecstatic celebration between executive and sycophant eventually ropes in the timidly dewy Kathy (Kelly Rossi), Bobby’s temp assistant and a clear outsider whose childish scruples seem laughably out of place. Some combination of Kathy’s frankness and her eagerness to please makes Bobby hand over the novel, and what follows is a rollercoaster of shifting attentions and questions about what a person’s work says about her.
Within the context of the original, making all three roles female becomes a thought-provoking exercise, opening up different sex-based workplace attitudes and how businesswomen present themselves and perceive each other. Just as this Bobby’s aggressive dominance reeks of hypermasculine overcorrection, a tried and true camouflage tactic, so too do Charlie’s downtrodden protests of deserving success after a history of hard work recall negative stereotypes of the underpaid, emotional apologizer psychologically ill-equipped to play with the boys. This all happens without any apparent changes in Mamet’s text; all it takes to swivel into these biases is a pair of power heels. Costume design by Warrow plays directly into the masculine/feminine dichotomy, potent choices that Bailey’s sound design extends in unsubtle, empowering female anthems. With assistance by Joe Plambeck’s lighting scheme, set designer Ken Warrow executes an impressive there-and-back change of locale that raises another path for a woman to succeed in business.
Paradoxically, however intriguing the conceit, it ultimately works because Bailey and company don’t dwell on it. Male or female, the heart of the production lies in the weaving story of personal allegiance, the corrosive depravity of the Hollywood machine, and the intersection of business and art — and business and pleasure. Warrow excels in exerting Bobby’s smug control, finding layers in a shallow façade, although the intrigue dips in time with the scripted drops in her cultivated magnetism. A convincing personification of an adrenaline spike, Smith’s work is best when her choices have an outlet, adding dimension with negativity where aimless sprays of energy couldn’t dig in. Rossi’s idealist is deliciously inscrutable, at times a comically empty vessel, at others a fervent bedrock of conviction, but her motivations remain almost too well couched, rendering cloudy one subtext-dependent key scene in particular.
This interpretation of Speed-the-Plow is certainly a bold piece of alternative casting, not least because it flagrantly turns unlikable characters into unlikable women in the offing. Yet it’s a credit to this production that whatever disparaging is on display originates from the characteristically foul-mouthed text; there’s no crude Executive Barbie pretense here, but simply women aching to make their mark in a man’s business, so determined to get ahead that it makes them act deplorably. No viewer would voluntarily spend time with this assembly of characters, but to observe from the audience proves a meaty opportunity to ponder the role of sexual politics in this scorching high-stakes deal.
April 9, 2012