BWW Reviews: SPEED-THE-PLOW, Playhouse Theatre, October 2 2014

David Mamet's Tony award winning Hollywood satire Speed The Plow is no stranger to stunt casting. Madonna played the original Karen, the temporary secretary with a dream of making a new kind of movie. So it is perhaps no surprise that producers this time around cast troubled film star Lindsay Lohan in the role, but while it may get some bums on seats it has not made for entertaining theatre.

Charlie Fox (Nigel Lindsay) has had the break he's been dreaming about his whole career: a big-name star will do his film and make him rich - he just needs the green light from former colleague - now head of production -Bobby Gould (Richard Schiff). But temporary secretary Karen (Lohan) is asked to courtesy-read a book about the end of the world, and attempts to bring her own nuclear weapon to the proceedings.

This is a short play, at just one hour 45 minutes split into three acts. The first act, where Fox and Gould attempt to outflatter each other, is the most entertaining of the three, where you see glimpses of the talent that both Lindsay and Schiff undoubtedly have.

Lohan, seemingly losing her voice and still, unfortunately, forgetting words, seems unable to do much more than deliver her lines. With very little help from Lindsay Posner's direction, she seems merely to be reciting them rather than giving them any meaning (something that her co-stars occasionally veer into as well).

This makes the second act - her seduction of Gould - an uncomfortable watch. Schiff tries nobly to pull out the comedy from the occasionally witty script but ultimately the scene ends up being neither comic nor profound and then eventually it's over, finished so quickly that the audience has little chance to absorb events.

The third act does at least get Lindsay and Schiff back together, but some dodgy stage-fighting doesn't make for much dramatic tension.

You're left with the sinking feeling that the producers hope that big names will be enough get the punters in - without the need to actually deliver a good production. The proliferation of cheap ticket deals already available suggests they might have failed.

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