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By far the biggest hullabaloo, however, was generated by Madonna. Although she has darkened her hair, is costumed in almost pristine propriety and speaks in grave, restrained tones with no hint of her trademark teen defiance, her entrance halfway through the first act evokes immediate gasps of recognition. From there, opinion sharply divides. New York Times Critic Frank Rich hailed her for "intelligent, scrupulously disciplined comic acting." Clive Barnes of the New York Post said, "There is a genuine, reticent charm here, but it is not ready to light the lamps on Broadway." But most first-nighters implied she had been hired for celebrity rather than talent. The New York Daily News headlined its lead review NO, SHE CAN'T ACT. Dennis Cunningham of WCBS-TV not only lambasted Madonna on the air but also later attacked Rich for praising her: "Frank has taken leave of his senses. He should apologize to every actor he has ever given a bad review to." Cunningham described himself as "in a righteous rage," and said he would seek a meeting with Mosher and Mamet to protest the casting.
Madonna, 28, who has made five films -- to raves for Desperately Seeking Susan and pans for Shanghai Surprise, with her husband, Actor Sean Penn -- greeted her tumultuous stage debut with outward calm. In an interview with TIME she said, "They always say horrible things about me. They'll be saying those things for the rest of my life." Then she joked about inviting one of her harshest critics to her birthday party. While everyone involved in the show acknowledges that she has helped at the box office, Director Mosher says her notoriety cuts both ways: "You don't want a play that you have worked on for five years to be overshadowed by a rock star."
Madonna says her role in Speed-the-Plow stemmed indirectly from a letter she wrote to Mamet in September 1987, praising House of Games. "It was the first movie I had seen in a long time that had stimulating language," she says. "I didn't feel it had been written for the masses. So I wrote my first fan letter." A few months later, she heard about Mamet's play through veteran Director Mike Nichols, and contacted Mosher, with whom she and Penn had worked in a nonpublic, workshop staging of David Rabe's play Goose and Tom-Tom.
That led to two multi-hour auditions and, later, what Mosher calls "small but significant rewrites during rehearsal" to accommodate the part to her. Adds Mosher: "Madonna brings a backbone of steel. Mamet made the character, rather than a poor soul who is battered to the ground, someone about whom there is an element of doubt." Indeed, the play's pivotal question is the true nature of her role, the smallest of the three but the engine of the plot. Says Mosher: "The audience is meant to go out asking one another: Is she an angel? Is she a whore?"