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CRAIG WILLIS
Karen (Zoe Grobart), Bobby (Larry Fried)
and Charlie (Richard Leebrick)
Maintain Consistent
Speed
Mamet play doesn’t gel
L
SPEAKING TO
THE MAN WHO
SHOT ME
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36 JANUARY 21, 2009
EUGENE WEEKLY
et’s get this out of the way: You
should go see Speed-the-Plow at
the Lord Leebrick for Richard
Leebrick’s performance. He nails the part
of brazen, half-desperate movie producer
Charlie Fox in Mamet’s 1988 play, revived
on Broadway last year.
One Eugenean posted on Twitter last
week that she’d seen “the preview of
Speed-the-Blow,” which made me laugh
heartily before I realized that Charlie Fox
and his friend/boss, Bobby Gould, probably
should have been speeding through a lot
more drugs. This play’s so precisely late
’80s that a few lines on Gould’s new desk
would have been just the thing.
Richard Leebrick’s performance wasn’t
scheduled: American Buffalo was on the
calendar. Whatever the reason(s) for the
switch, I’d have preferred to see Larry
Fried directing Buffalo to his playing
Bobby Gould in Speed.
Fried, probably because he himself is
a nice guy, makes Bobby — a man who
just got promoted to a plum, if highly
pressured, spot in a Hollywood studio —
too caring and thoughtful to match up with
Richard Leebrick’s manic, focused Charlie.
Mamet’s script carries some of the blame,
for it asks the actor playing Bobby to make
bizarre choices.
One of the major plot lines concerns
Bobby’s loneliness and desire for his
temporary secretary Karen (Zoe Grobart).
This powerful, wealthy guy — yes, mid-
level in a studio, not the big kahuna, but
still a successful predator — knows how
to get that new offi ce (the paint’s only half-
fi nished in Amy Dunn’s set), but hasn’t
fi gured out how to bed the many willing
Hollywood climbers out there? I don’t
think so.
Those issues aside, Bobby’s sexual and
existential crises (Art or commerce? What
should he do?) occupy enough of his mind
to leave room for the seemingly innocent
Karen to slip her ambition into the place
where Bobby’s cold calculations should
be.
Grobart, whose mellifl uous voice and
fearlessness enlivened Shipwrecked!, needs
to roughen up her mannered movement
and cadences for Speed-the-Plow, not to
the level of Charlie’s grunts and narrow-
eyed self-interest but at least enough to
capture the attention of the audience.
When Karen makes a seductive attempt to
interest Bobby in greenlighting a literary
apocalyptic book, Grobart needs to lose the
wide-eyed look and beautifully modulated
tone — and gain some slyness.
Sly: stock in trade for Mamet. So
are guys, of course. Speed-the-Plow, no
shock to Mamet fans or haters, concerns
men jockeying for position and power
using language as a weapon. Whether the
weapons emerge blunt or deadly sharp,
language and its pacing stand at the vital
center of the play. What’s Bobby paid for
— to make art? No, and we know it, and
so does Charlie, who never takes his eye
off the ball.
Charlie’s explosion of anger at Bobby’s
sudden and weird betrayal provides
Richard Leebrick the chance to show
his physicality. Although the fury serves
Charlie’s selfi sh purposes, it’s Charlie,
not Karen, who cares about Bobby and
his future. Karen, a cardboard character
(Mamet’s not known for writing women,
to put it mildly), plans climbing on and
over Bobby. Charlie, who’s been loyal to
his friend for years, wants them to succeed
at the Hollywood game together.
The plot’s central question — Should
Bobby take a sure-thing buddy movie or an
end-of-the-world arthouse idea to a higher
power at the studio? — would probably
have meant more before movies like The
Road or even the bleak There Will Be Blood
hit the big screen. And no one now could
be surprised by what perhaps appeared in
1988 an eye-opening behind-the-scenes
look at the underbelly of getting a fi lm
made; we’ve got Nikki Finke, a constant
stream of info on Twitter, celebrity cell
photos, TMZ, Perez Hilton, all kinds
of reality shows and even the website
Smoking Gun to tell us about every last
detail of every last deal.
That takes some shine off the play,
but Mamet’s depiction of interpersonal
power relations could win through if Fried
and Grobart found their footing in this
production. I look forward to seeing the
short, no-intermission play again at the end
of the run. Meanwhile, Leebrick’s burning
ew
up the Leebrick.
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