Speed-The-Plow Review

Speed-The-Plow

by David Mamet

http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/speed-the-plow/playhouse-theatre/

Speed-The-Lo

With the press feeding frenzy on the first ever stage appearance of LiLo (yes, TLT and her coupé are down there with the yoofspeak!), it sometimes felt like life imitating art, or maybe commerce, at the Playhouse Theatre. 

Yet scaffolding outside turned out to be real,  not perches for the papps. And as hard-hatted builders did not leap to attention when TLT drove up in her limousine, they were probably not undercover reporters. Even so, advance publicity for David Mamet’s 1988 play “Speed-The-Plow” indicates  the baying hacks have never studied  Hillel the Elder’s monoped precept of brotherly love. Or maybe they view LiLo as some parole-breaking ho rather than a brother ... 

So ...

”Will LiLo overcome the Mean Critics, learn some life lessons - surely every feelgood Hollywood film has a pseudo morality? -  and emerge triumphant ...?” 

Well ... 

Firstly, all three actors in this preview performance had acting chops but – TLT is undecided whether it is the play or the direction by Lindsay Posner which make this an uneven theatrical experience. 

Bobby Gould (Richard Schiff of "West Wing" fame) is a newly-promoted or appointed (TLT and sidekick didn't know the play before seeing this) Hollywood executive with the power to “green light” new studio productions. (How thrilling ... has David Mamet read TLT’s blogs ;)?!. 

Erstwhile colleague Charlie Fox (an exuberant Nigel Lindsay) sees his seemingly more cerebral former colleague, suddenly lifted on the shoulders of a corporation, as the gateway to riches with his own populist hack work – a predictable prison violence-fest. 

Add to this testosterone mix a shapely tomato  - yes, TLT  is also down there with the male chauvinist slang! - Karen the temp secretary (Lindsay Lohan) who becomes a tool in Charlie’s blinkered aggression to promote his private interests but turns out to have her own unhealthy (for Charlie) interest in radiation ...

Nigel Lindsay is the most consistent of the performers in this office (and bedroom) satire with an ebullient Charlie invading the stage as he intends to make a cinematic killing, let loose to become a Hollywood made man. Richard Schiff looks and moves the part as Bobby but until the second act his faltering diction upsets the play's balance.

OK, OK, I’m coming to her – in the first act Lindsay Lohan, while slightly constrained, projects her lines clearly, naturally, bringing a poise and dignity to the role of Karen. But oh, and oh, did someone threaten her in the interval? Or did the boys not let her in to the secrets of the rest of the plot? 

Although still clear, she seemed nobbled, delivering her second act lines as a perfunctory duty. She appeared relieved to be viewed a part of the team when taking her bow (ok, from the lofty heights of The Gods, TLT has given in to the common mob, making up her own plot and indulging in a bit of unwarranted amateur psychology like everyone else) !!!  

While  Lohan goes down like a bear market automated trade, Schiff grabs his opportunity and somewhat frenetically but authentically comes into his own. The problem is all three actors throughout feel as if they are acting in different plays, leaving the rhythm of the plot in tatters, not helped by a prolonged gap for a scene change in the second act. Maybe by press night, it’ll be pulled together. In the meantime, TLT and her roadster cannot bring themselves to present their coveted green light but are happy to shove it on the amber light “maybe”  pile.

Review Facts

Facts

by Arthur Milner

Finborough Theatre, SW10

Scripting the Cops

After disappearing off the celebrity scene, it takes guts to reappear, as Kerry Katona or Frank Sinatra can testify. ;) But TLT and her somewhat dusty steed (horsepower rather than horse meat!) decided to make a comeback for this intriguing Canadian play. A Jewish-Israeli (Michael Feast) and a Palestinian detective (Philip Arditti) meet in a tiled Israeli military unit, the latter arriving after negotiating checkpoints, to investigate an American archeologist’s murder on the West Bank. Outside their usual local comfort zones, the archeologist's nationality forces them to take national and world opinion into account. Growing above the Palestinian and Israeli impasse, in fact (geddit?!), the play turns into a much more tricksy and close-to-the-bone dissection of policing worldwide and military-dominated land. That is: the use (and abuse) of technology and a police mindset  rooted in literary and screenwriting stereotypes, software multiple choice, competing academic hypotheses and, yes, nationalistic ideology. Everything, save evidence-based investigations. In short, amid this all, what are the facts? Was this clear from the preview performance at The Finborough directed by Caitlin McLeod? One has to say, 'Only sporadically'. Maybe the fault lies in the  script, maybe in an uncertain production, or perhaps a bit of both. Eventually the Jewish militant settler suspect, a property manager and nimble offspring of a lawyer, joins the detectives for interrogation in a canny performance by Paul Rattray. However, it takes a very attuned ear to catch the hints undermining the stereotypes put forward - and they are just faint hints planted amid the red herrings in this piece. It could be this play, despite, or indeed because of, its arguments, needs a more Pinteresque approach to allow the audience to assimilate the ironies underlying the oft trundled-out and well-rehearsed formulas about crime scenarios and Israel/Palestine. Consideration rather than choler.  This discussion of policing and technology should seem vital in a week which has spotlighted local level South African police abuse, often hidden when not filmed, and British children turned into stock computer program figures within school report software for administrative convienience. Instead, if TLT has interpreted correctly why the play may seem schematic, the myths and formulas, instead of counterpointing, are allowed to outweigh the meaning. Of course TLT and friend may have got this totally wrong - something you're unlikely to hear any police officer admit nowadays unless instructed by a professional liability insurance company lawyer or an approved police software program ;) An amber light for a production tackling important issues which may still have the potential to become a must-see if it finds its feet during the run.

Review Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel
Music and Lyrics by Jerry Herman, Book by Michael Stewart

Based on an idea by Lionel Spigelglass, Revised by Francine Pascal
Southwark Playhouse SE1

More Than Bagels and Knishes

With a ravishing 1974 score by Jerry  Herman, musical Mack and Mabel, a saga of silent movies, stardom, drugs and a doomed love affair should be a stonking success. Knowing the wonderful songs beforehand, TLT and her firing-on-all-cylinders sidekick were inclined to be kindly disposed and doubt the criticism of the late Michael Stewart's book as some sort of 1970s’ theatrical politicking.  Any musical with the song “Look What Happened to Mabel”, where lyrics impeccably rhyme “ambitious” and “knishes” and still manage to convey touchingly the revolutionary impact of movie technology on people’s lives,  must have something going for it.  Well, your dynamic theatregoing duo came out humming the tunes and admiring the intermittent dance routines but understanding,  through experience, what the critics meant. As silent movie pioneer, Mack Sennett, Norman Bowman is a tad young for the role but has the charismatic brooding look, bone structure and power in his voice to take on the classic Herman bitter-sweet hymns to life, love and the movie industry. Flame-haired Laura Pitt-Pulford's singing performance also reaches powerful heights as deli delivery girl turned Sennett star and lover Mabel Normand. Classy performances emerge too from Jessica Martin as tough-talking Lottie Ames and Stuart Matthew Price as quietly efficient and tactful up-and-coming director Frank Capra.  The problem is the way the main characters of Sennett and his star Mabel Normand are written rather than the performances. The personalities dissolve as the show progresses, pulling any number of ways with no exact trajectory and fudging the melodrama. Maybe in the 1970s, an early twentieth-century tale ending in drugs and eventual death,  with lunatic antics, vagaries of film finance, drug dealing, hints of abortions, gangland hits and something darker underlying even the zany Keystone cops were just too close to home to write about in an uncensored fluent fashion.  In contrast, Fred Ebb's and Bob Fosse's satiric book for Chicago achieves an upbeat, if perverse, slick American Dream ending. Despite revisions by Stewart’s sister Francine Pascal, Herman’s soaring musical peaks can’t hide the dips into anti-climactic dialogue, hurried transitions and narrative clumsiness. Yet, it’s worth keeping the faith for the songs, set numbers, the ragged, atmospheric true-life tragedy and the sisyphean task just about overcome by a talented, hard-working  cast and team, including director Thom Southerland and choreographer Lee Proud. So, still totally worth seeing and an amber light.

Democracy Review

Democracy

by Michael Frayn

The Old Vic SE1       

It’s Complicated 

TLT and her motorised assistant made their way to the white pillars of the German Chancellery, sorry, The Old Vic, for a  performance of Michael Frayn’s 2003 spy drama  Democracy. In a time of coalition and European nations yoked uneasily together, this proved to be an intriguing, if uneven, evening. Democracy is based on a real-life 1970s’ scandal when the knife-edge task of keeping political parties, straining-at-the-leash diverse Western German states and an East German Communist neighbour on side falls on the enigmatic figure of Chancellor Willi Brandt played with wry downbeat charm by Patrick Drury.  Meanwhile by his side is the scuttling, loyal assistant Guenter Guillaume (Aidan McArdle looking for all the world like a stocky Groucho Marx who really was of German descent!), eventually exposed as a Stasi plant. From the Lilian Baylis seats (the Upper Circle) the dry complex wit of the dialogue was sometimes a little lost in the first act. Perhaps the play’s poetic pace and rhythms are more suited to an intimate stage, despite the striking evocation of  governmental conference rooms, corridors and the over-the-border spy control room.  As a blogger, TLT doesn’t have to play the lofty critic and it’s worth eavesdropping audience reaction. Some were totally engrossed in the deadpan evocation of 1970s' politics, personalities and geography. Others were noticeably less enchanted: “A history lesson” and “lack of women” were two comments.  It’s the second act where the ruthless all-male politicking, symbiotic spy network, personal dilemmas and, most of all, the mystery of human behaviour at the heart of this play, come into their own . So mixed feelings reflected in a verdict of an amber with some flashes of green light.