Joe's View

I finally caught up with the Broadway revival of “Speed-the-Plow” over the weekend and came away with a renewed appreciation for David Mamet’s Hollywood play and for the talent of the prodigious stage and film actor William H. Macy.
Macy agreed to step into the three-character play after Jeremy Piven bowed out in December due to a much-publicized case of mercury poisoning (too much sushi the actor and his doctor said when the star of HBO’s “Entourage” left New York for his Los Angeles home base before fulfilling his contractual obligations to the play’s producers).
The limited-run engagement would have lost money if it had been forced to close due to Piven’s exit, but “Speed-the-Plow” became a profit-making entity last week thanks to Macy (and pinch hitter Norbert Leo Butz, who stepped into Piven’s role for the few weeks it took to get Macy ready to play movie studio production chief Bobby Gould).
Macy is an old associate of Mamet’s — they co-founded Manhattan’s Atlantic Theater Company in 1985 — and he has acted in many plays by the Chicago master of poetic profanity (Connecticut audiences were lucky enough to see Macy in the two-character Mamet drama, “Oleanna,” a decade ago at the Rich Forum in Stamford).
Macy gives Bobby a much more reflective nature than is usually the case in stagings of “Speed-the-Plow” which makes the man’s passive-aggressive relationship with his coked-up old pal Charlie Fox (the terrific Raul Esparza) all the more interesting.
Bobby and Charlie went up the Hollywood ladder together — starting out in a studio mailroom many years earlier — but when the play begins Bobby has just been made production chief of the studio and Charlie is still dependent on someone else giving him a greenlight for the projects he’s hustling.
Act One finds the two men on the same page — Charlie has a star attached to a new action movie script that is almost certain to be a moneymaker and he offers it to Bobby as one of his first productions rather than “taking it across the street” (i.e. offering it to a rival).
As the lean and mean “Speed-the-Plow” progresses, however, Bobby starts to wonder if he shouldn’t be making quality pictures rather than action shlock and the two men head for an explosive Act Three confrontation.
The cause of their rupture is Karen (Elisabeth Moss), the temporary secretary who convinces Bobby during their long Act Two conversation that a new book about “the end of the world” would be his perfect first production as studio chief.
“Speed-the-Plow” debuted on Broadway two decades ago in a production that was unbalanced by the casting of Madonna as Karen. The singer was then at the peak of her fame, but her mediocre performance made the second act a flat detour from the fireworks between Bobby and Charlie (who were played very well by Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver).
Now, with Macy, Esparza and Moss, Mamet’s art vs. commerce debate is fully realized.
You only have until Feb. 22 to see “Speed-the-Plow” at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

It pains me to report that the new Charles Busch comedy, “The Third Story,” is a dud.
The show’s official opening is tonight at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village. I’m afraid Busch and company will not be treated too kindly by the New York theater press.
At the final preview performance yesterday afternoon, the house was sold-out and buzzing with anticipation before the lights went down, but more than one theatergoer snuck away during the intermission (including a rather prominent Broadway producer who was sitting across the aisle from me).
Busch is a personal favorite of mine — his deranged staged movie parodies (especially “Shanghai Moon”) have given me great pleasure for many years.
“Drag” comedy has never been my thing, but when Busch dresses up like a woman on stage the result is comic bliss — he somehow manages to send-up and revere great actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, ranging from Joan Crawford to Bette Davis to Barbara Stanwyck.
Busch is not one of those crazy buffs who sees no flaws in old-time movies — his plays are as much critiques of ancient Hollywood as they are love letters. He is a walking history of Hollywood with no illusions about the subject he knows so well.
The combination of high and low elements in Busch’s performances — his acute awareness of the struggle of working-class actresses like Crawford to play “dames” from better backgrounds — is always devastatingly funny.
The new Busch comedy is an exposition heavy mess that only allows the writer-star a few moments where he can cut loose as a Hollywood version of a 1940s female gangster — Queenie Bartlett.
The real star of “The Third Story” is Kathleen Turner as an alcoholic Hollywood writer whose overheated story ideas occasionally come to life on stage (that’s where Busch comes in). Turner seemed shaky at the Sunday matinee and it was hard to blame her — she is on stage for almost the entire two-hour-and-15-minute play and she has to reel off line after crazy line with very little comic pay-off.
Everyone in the show plays multiple roles and rarely have I seen a company of actors work so hard for so little dramatic reward.
Busch’s generosity to the Turner character — in terms of stage time — makes his own moments on stage seem disconnected and not nearly as funny as they would have been if Queenie was given more stage time. Busch the writer has shortchanged Busch the actor.