Review Roundup: SPEED-THE-PLOW Opens in the West End - All the Reviews!

Theatre Royal Bath Productions welcomes Richard Schiff, Nigel Lindsay and Lindsay Lohan in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, helmed by Lindsay Posner at London's Playhouse Theatre and opening officially tonight, October 2, for a strictly limited run. A high-octane modern classic, Speed-the-Plow is a brilliantly satirical portrayal of Hollywood filled with Mamet's trademark wit and mesmerizing dialogue.

When a hugely bankable star agrees to appear in a sure-fire commercial hit, film producers Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox are convinced this is the break of a lifetime. That is until Karen (played by Lindsay Lohan), a temporary secretary, derails the dream. When she persuades Bobby to dump the blockbuster in favour of a story which can only be described as box-office poison, Charlie is forced to resort to desperate measures....

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: On Thursday night, Lindsay Lohan, that notably notorious American actress and the most gossiped-about celebrity invitee to London's theatreland in ages, made her stage debut with a surprising -- and smouldering -- degree of style. True, she fluffed a line and needed an off-stage prompt -- but given the pressure to prove herself, that's just-about pardonable....But she delivers enough of the goods, playing the small but pivotal role of a temporary secretary who upsets the male balance of power in a top production office, to hold her head up high...Attractive, leggy and arrestingly husky of voice Lohan, 28, gives an ample sense of this journey, convincing us she's an outsider even if certain lines ("I know what it is to be bad") seem calculated to remind you of her real-life Lalaland exploits. Yes, her flat delivery needs more work, but so does the rest of the show -- saddled with overlong scene-changes and not a patch on the Old Vic production that starred Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: So how was she? The first thing to say is that Lindsay Lohan gives a perfectly creditable performance in this revival of David Mamet's acerbic, anti-Hollywood satire. Whatever her colourful past, Lohan brings on stage a quality of breathless naivety that is far and away the most interesting thing in Lindsay Posner's otherwise tame, under-powered revival...This doesn't mean Lohan is ready to play Hedda Gabler tomorrow: simply that, aside from a single prompt, she holds the stage with ease and doesn't let the side down...The meat of the play lies in the scenes between Bobby, the new head of production, and his old friend Charlie, who comes to him with a highly bankable package involving a prison-set script and a hot director. The scenes between them should crackle and fizz...but here they never take wing, partly because of the miscasting of Richard Schiff as Bobby...It is left to Nigel Lindsay as Charlie to supply the energy that is missing.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: Given the circumstances and the glare of publicity, it would have been understandable if [Lohan] had succumbed to traumatic mutism at tonight's press performance, so it's good to report that she was completely on top of the script...So bravo to Lindsay Lohan for transcending these considerations and turning in a deftly delineated characterisation. Sporting a white minidress and turquoise heels in one scene, she has real presence as a gauche, husky-voiced operator who keeps you guessing as to how far she goes around using her idealistic naivete and wide-eyed questions ("Does it have to be like this?") as a stalking horse for naked ambition...Richard Schiff and Nigel Lindsay are in fine, darkly frisky form as the pair of producers whose longstanding friendship she threatens to sunder...A good but by no means a great night out whose value does not depend on the swirl of publicity occasioned by the female lead.

Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter: So let's not bury the lede: Lindsay Lohan's performance as Karen in the new London production ofSpeed-the-Plow on press night was okay. It wasn't a car crash, but then neither was it anything likely to win her an Olivier award, London's equivalent of a Tony...Although she seemed sometimes to be rushing the lines and failed to make the material sing, overall she demonstrated presence. However, none of that changes the fact that this is a tepid, underwhelming production in which Lohan is just one of several mediocre elements...As with any work by Mamet, the text needs actors who can make his very musical, percussive dialogue crackle as it should in order to unleash the full, abrasive force required. The male leads struggle with the timing of these verbal volleys. Lindsay at least has the right comic chops to wring laughs with the book's better one liners...but his eruption into violence in the home stretch feels forced. Schiff is an even weaker link, perhaps because his slight frame and schlubby presentation fail to persuade that he's a coming man in a cutthroat industry.

Simon Edge, Express: I'm sorry to be the bearer of disappointing tidings, but pile-up it ain't. A husky Lohan doesn't look especially confident on stage -- how would she, given the burden of negative expectation? But on press night she only needed one prompt...She seems uncomfortable with the barrage of interrupted sentences in Mamet's script, putting full stops where there should be dashes, and it's not obvious that Richard 'West Wing' Schiff's head of production would be so blinded by her passion for the book as to risk his career on a movie version. But it's part of the flimsiness of this verbally thrilling but morally tawdry play that he doesn't actually need to...Schiff drawls with surprising weariness through his midlife crisis and the most watchable performance in director Lindsay Posner's production comes from Nigel Lindsay...If the production were funnier the moral bankruptcy might matter less. The laughs don't come fast enough enough for that, but at least there are none at anyone's expense, as the worst of the preview reports had us believe.

Michael Roddy, Reuters: By the closing curtain, Lohan had proved she could hold her own with two top-notch male actors...The trio, under director Lindsay Posner at the Playhouse Theatre, managed to give a new edge to the cutting humour in Mamet's 1988 play...But despite the leading ladies who've inhabited the role, the evening belongs to Charlie Fox and Bob Gould, two Hollywood types whose business dealings, and suggested mutual backstabbings, go way back...It would be unfair to give away more of the plot, but in some ways the play is dated, particularly its dissing of the "sissy" writer's apocalyptic novel. Since the play was written, dystopian/apocalyptic films like "the Hunger Games" have become all the rage. What remains is Mamet's sharp, cutting dialogue and his fiendishly dark take on Hollywood.

Marianka Swain, theartsdesk.com: To do Mamet's work justice, you must be able to deliver dialogue with the speed, skill and breathtaking bravura confidence of Usain Bolt. In Lindsay Posner's much-hyped but frustratingly sluggish revival at the Playhouse Theatre, only one of three cast members rises to that challenge -- and it's the one who's generated by far the fewest column inches. British actor Nigel Lindsay is the breakout star of a strange experiment in meta-satire...It's a resonant interpretation for this post-recession age and allows him to explore a wide range of emotions, from oleaginous glee and brutish fury to stricken incomprehension. Schiff, no stranger to lightening-speed speech after his years on Sorkin's West Wing, succeeds in finding Mamet's rhythm, but coasts along it rather than punching it...Schiff pays it forward by, in turn, propping up husky-voiced, endearingly childlike Lohan with a series of deft comic reactions that vastly flatter the recipient...Between lines -- delivered with unvaried intonation that makes a nonsense of the stop/start punctuation -- [Lohan] simply switches off like a computer conserving energy, with no indication of spontaneous, collaborative live performance

Quenton Letts, Daily Mail: Let's be honest, Lindsay Lohan's stage debut last night was about greed. I do not mean that the play itself is about greed - though it is set in Hollywood, capital of covetousness. But the casting of Miss Lohan, a vulnerable woman, a sometime star of advertising commercials and children's films, a lady with personal problems which have been splashed over every internet grot site and yellow-press scandal sheet, was the work of agents and producers and commercial sharks who thought they could turn a few quid.

Patricia Nicol, Metro: That Mamet is making a point that Hollywood corrupts makes Lohan dream casting. If there is nervous laughter when her character demands another drink, there is also sympathy when Karen declares: 'I know what it is to be lost.' Her mother sat one seat along from me and declared herself 'more nervous than my daughter.' Last night, at least, her daughter did her proud.

Photo Credit: Simon Annand

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