A newly promoted movie executive strides purposefully around his office with a would-be producer tagging behind. At every step or two, the aspiring dealmaker histrionically kisses the mogul's hindquarters. Ostensibly this scene of ritual abasement between old, close friends is being staged for an audience of one, the mogul's new secretary. It is also a central metaphor in Broadway's hottest new hit, Speed-the-Plow, a foulmouthed and ferociously funny slice of Hollywood life.
The show, which opened last week amid a hubbub of publicity, blends snob appeal with raw marquee value. The playwright, David Mamet, won a 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his previous Broadway effort, Glengarry Glen Ross, and has since become a hot film writer (The Untouchables) and director (House of Games). The shy but surprising secretary is played by Rock Star Madonna (Material Girl, Like a Virgin), whose program biography cites "13 consecutive top five recordings, bettered only by Elvis and the Beatles." While reviewers seemed transfixed by the question "Can she act?" -- most said no -- audiences seemed not to care. Advance sales promptly topped $1 million.
In such stellar company, Co-Stars Joe Mantegna, a 1984 Tony Award winner for Glengarry, and Ron Silver, a movie and TV veteran (Silkwood, NBC's Billionaire Boys Club), might almost be an afterthought. In fact, the interaction between Mantegna as the mogul and Silver as a shameless huckster is the core of Mamet's pell-mell 88-minute play. Of all American playwrights, Mamet, 40, remains the shrewdest observer of the evil that men do unto each other in the name of buddyhood. Obsessed with the need for ethical debate, he nonetheless brings as much delight as despair to his portraits of panthers on the prowl, sharks in a feeding frenzy, business guys in suits. This may be partly because the characters are drawn from Mamet's real life in Hollywood. Part of last week's media furor about the play, in fact, was the assertion that Mantegna's role is based on Ned Tanen, head of production at Paramount, which made The Untouchables, while the obsequious producer is said to be a sketch of Untouchables Producer Art Linson, a self-described Silver look-alike. Says the apparently flattered Linson: "Mamet has to get his material somewhere."
Mamet added to the production's mystique by declining all requests for interviews and refusing to explain the play's odd title. It appears to derive from a blessing in medieval verse and song, "God speed your plough." According to Silver, it means approximately, "Do your work, and God will help you." Director Gregory Mosher, who has staged twelve of Mamet's plays and is one of his closest friends, suggests instead that the phrase "has to do with turning fresh earth -- and of course there is a sexual pun."