(3 of 4)
Whore is precisely the term the two men in the play use to describe themselves: they are not creators of films or even fans of films but enablers of films, and they pride themselves on letting projects advance or die based solely on commercial potential. Mantegna's character, so newly installed in executive splendor that his office furniture is still covered with painters' drop cloths, solemnly explains that a quarter-century in show business has given him a certain wisdom. The cardinal rule, he says, is not to accept percentages of net profit because there is never, ever, a net. Then he muses aloud about whether there could ever be such a thing as a successful film that did not make money and announces, solemnly, that there cannot. At the outset, Silver's character is pitching a violent prison film starring a "bankable" macho star. At the end, he and the Mantegna character are on their way to meet with the next executive layer for final approval.
The plot, such as it is, turns on the attempts of the Madonna character to interpose her own project, an adaptation of a high-flown allegorical novel about the risks of living in an overly technologized world. The opaque and overwrought passages that she quotes sound unfilmable. Yet even if the text is drivel -- and it resonates that way from the stage -- its search for meaning touches some inarticulate longing in the secretary who is given it to read and, eventually, in her boss, who for a while joins her quixotic crusade. He starts out trying to seduce her on a bet and ends up considering a move that will surely destroy his career. Like many a cheap-jack hustler, he momentarily finds religion. But his faith in the book, and the woman who made him believe in it, seems to be still more illusions to be stripped away.
Mamet has said that his screenwriting, beginning with The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and including his Oscar-nominated script for The Verdict (1982), "forced on me the issue of plot." He acknowledged to friends that Glengarry was the first of his plays to have anything resembling a workable second act. But Speed-the-Plow has two huge holes in its narrative. First, the effort to persuade Mantegna's character to believe in the book takes place almost entirely offstage. Second, right up to the end it is impossible to tell whether the book is brilliance or bilge. If it is the former, then the ending is uncommercially tragic. If the latter, then the ending is a foregone conclusion and, however brief, takes too long in coming.
Madonna's awkward, indecisive characterization seems calculated to help paper over those gaps and sustain suspense by keeping the audience from reaching conclusions. Thus the question "Can she act?" cannot be answered. The shrewdness in her performance is clear, but so, alas, is her thinking process: she lacks ease and naturalness. Mantegna, by contrast, superbly manages his character's clashing mental states. Silver is captivating, especially in a second-act tantrum that is equal parts rage, hurt, con-artist scam and genuine grief at a betrayal.