[In the following review, Sauvage contends that Speed-the-Plow displays good acting and directorship, but is a stagnant commentary on the Hollywood film industry.]

The new David Mamet play that opened recently at the Royale Theater is called Speed-the-Plow, apparently after an old form of farewell once used among farmers. This seems apt, given the author's fondness for spreading stercoreaceous metaphors around like manure. Yet we are probably meant to understand the title as applying to the field of sex rather than agriculture.

Speed-the-Plow wants to be a sharp and rousing satire of the American motion picture industry, still symbolized outside that urban dispersion known as Los Angeles by the name Hollywood. The play does give us a sardonic and entirely appropriate view of the process by which films are conceived there, if not necessarily born. But it ends up a lifeless essay on how an evening of idealistic entreaties, followed by a fling on the couch traditionally employed for casting, can bring about a total if fleeting intellectual transformation in a Hollywood producer who earlier had contentedly described himself as a competent whore.

Bobby Gould (Joe Mantegna) has just become head of production at a major studio, and can't wait for the painters to remove their protective canvas from the furniture before moving into his new office. Charlie Fox (Ron Silver), who started out with him in the mail-room 11 years ago, has not had quite the same luck in advancing his career and is a lesser studio executive. Notwithstanding the disparity in rank, the two are great pals, as they constantly reassure each other.

Charlie manages to secure a 24-hour option on what in Hollywood is bound to be considered pure gold: the rights to a prison movie built around a popular star who is sure to attract long lines at the box office. All doors are open to Charlie while he is holding this “hot property,” he does not fail to remind us, yet he brings it to his old chum Bobby. Carried away almost as much by the gesture of friendship as by the luscious financial prospects, Bobby proclaims his intention to make Charlie an associate producer for the film, on equal terms with himself. They merely have to get the official okay from the chief of the studio before the option expires at 10 o'clock the next morning.

A superficial complication arises immediately: The studio chief has just left for New York. His efficient secretary quickly locates him, however, and he promises to be back in his office in time to sign the big deal, whose promise he recognizes as quickly as Bobby did. The real problem, although we have no inkling of it as the first act draws to a close, is going to be Bobby's temporary secretary, Karen.

It is not because Karen is played by Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone—who with a certain lack of modesty uses only the first of these names as the moniker for her triumphant career—that she turns everything topsy-turvy. In fact, Madonna is given little opportunity to deploy the celebrated attributes that have made her famous everywhere (including Paris, where last summer Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, vainly hoping to become President of France this spring, personally received her like the First Lady). She does share a tender moment with Bobby on the sofa in his apartment. But that is only after she has used talents more typical of a televangelist than a pop star to persuade him to drop the sure-fire prison screenplay and produce instead a movie based on a novel she believes is a profound masterpiece.

The book Karen has championed was originally left with Bobby by the studio chief for a “courtesy read”—a mildly flattering assessment that will permit the studio to reject it without seeming inconsiderate to the author. Bobby gave it to Karen to vet, with the ulterior motive of getting her over to his place for a late-night assignation. He is not really attracted to her. Charlie is the one who happens to be fascinated by her—he can't believe how clumsy, innocent, and yes, virginal this temp appears to be. In the exuberant mood created by the imminent deal, he wagered ＄500 that Bobby would not be able to “make her” by the following morning.

Bobby wins the bet, but David Mamet doesn't feel obliged to give us any insight into why. Nor can we fathom how the not very bright Karen has overwhelmed the rational faculties of a tough and cynical Hollywood exec, unless she was divinely inspired. Mamet has made her an enigma—an unpoetical, irrational and finally irritating enigma.

Karen does not have a real existence, or a dramatic one for that matter, and it would be idle to invent one for her. Nevertheless, I was moved to play detective and explore the hypothesis that she might be the particularly clever agent of the “Eastern sissy writer” whose novel was submitted to the studio, or perhaps his resourceful and devoted girlfriend. But the sleuth meets obstacles here more daunting than those encountered by the critic.

Let's suppose Karen somehow knew ahead of time that the book would land in Bobby Gould's office. Compounding the improbability, let us assume she found the means to insinuate herself into the new production head's office at exactly the right moment. Then we are still left with the impossible task of explaining how she could have foreseen the wager between Charlie and Bobby, which was the sole reason for the nocturnal tête-à-tête that provided her with the opportunity to deliver her pitch to the right man.

These implausibilities push us in the direction of accepting Karen as simply a virtuous and incompetent girl who is inclined to sudden enthusiasms. Yet the office of a big-time Hollywood producer is the last place on earth where her type could land a secretarial job one day and still have it the next. I'm not denying David Mamet's gifts as an observer. (Indeed, being a little better acquainted with Hollywood movie people than with Chicago real estate salesmen, I'm less bothered by the relentless use of four-letter words in Speed-the-Plow than by their abuse in his Glengarry Glen Ross.) But where in Tinseltown could Mamet have observed a specimen like Karen?

As for that pivotal book, Mamet gives us a copious sampling of its contents during most of the second act and part of the third. Karen recites passages in a hushed voice, with morbid conviction; later, Charlie—furious at the duping of his partner—reads from the work with explosive contempt.

What we actually hear is a string of pseudo-philosophical banalities about how atomic radiation can religiously regenerate the world in the process of destroying it, or somesuch. The selections are ridiculous, not funny, and certainly not in any sense compelling. Yet we are expected to believe that, with Karen as their medium, they bewitch Bobby Gould into resolving to throw away an assured commercial success and a ＄10 million budget—at least until Charlie helps him regain his senses.

I cannot guess whether Mamet thought the excerpts from the novel would reinforce the Pinteresque effect he is obviously striving for with Karen. But I do recall seeing a Mamet piece at the Goodman Theater in Chicago years ago that might shed some light on the matter. (Curiously, it was not listed among the playwright's works in the Playbill.) Purporting to dramatize the feelings of an explorer confronted with the mystical beliefs of a group of natives who inhabit a region near the North Pole, it displayed an awfulness quite similar to that of the book in the present play. Maybe Mamet fantasizes that such material might, under the right circumstances, actually transport an earthbound, dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood type to the extent that he would jettison a “hot property” in order to produce it.

An evening at Speed-the-Plow, though, is not an evening entirely wasted. The play's gaping flaws are partially redeemed by several scenes in the first and third acts that are written with ferocious sarcasm and executed with uninhibited rashness thanks to Gregory Mosher's direction. Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver, moreover, turn in superb performances throughout. And there is, after all, something special about the fact that this is Madonna's first appearance in a Broadway play.

Madonna's acting in Speed-the-Plow has elicited unkind observations from some critics. This strikes me as unfair. I have never seen her in concert or on screen, and I cannot appraise her dramatic skills with only the undefined and indefinable role of Karen to go on. Still, considering the magnitude of Madonna's fame, one cannot fail to be impressed by the disciplined way she submits to the obscure requirements of the playwright and the director not to mention the costume designer. On her visit to Bobby's apartment, for example, she is decked out in a dress that is both ill-fitting and unattractive. The point seems to have been to make her look and behave like the diametrical opposite of the star her admirers would flock to the theater to see.

A final, bizarre note. The night I saw Speed-the-Plow the standing room at the Royale was packed with Madonna fans (who crowded the sidewalk after the show waiting for their idol to emerge). Yet when she first stepped onto the stage she was greeted with not the slightest hint of applause. I wouldn't dare attempt to explain this unbelievable, absolute silence. Perhaps, however, Madonna should consider reappearing on Broadway in a part that would have more meaning for her and for the audience.