Mamet play at Village Playhouse

The Hollywood sign is a familiar landmark to David Mamet, although he got his start in Chicago.

Twenty years ago, using his trademark caustic, street-smart dialogue, the playwright wrote "Speed-the-Plow," a biting, revealing, unvarnished view of the capricious and venal Hollywood scene of the '80s, as it depicts two men engaging in a verbal boxing match centered on the eternal debate of art versus money. But, of course, there's a woman involved as well.

For those wondering about how the word "plow" figures into La-La-Land, the play's title is derived from an old English farming phrase: "God speed the plough," which was used to confer good luck and a swift and profitable season of ploughing.

A graduate of UCLA who grew up amid the Hollywood scene, Keely Enright is thrilled that the Village Playhouse will open its eighth season with this Mamet play.

"We are staging this hilarious roller-coaster ride of a play for many reasons," says Enright, co-founder and artistic director of the Village Playhouse. "One of them is that I love the way Mamet writes, and working with actors on the text of a Mamet play, with his trademark rapid-fire dialogue, is wonderful for me."

She adds, "The world that Mamet creates is exactly the world I worked in for many years, when I was an intern at age 21 at 20th Century Fox, and every day saw the dealmakers, the types of men that Mamet's characters, Bobby and Charlie, are. These characters are just as relevant today as 20 years ago, and maybe more so, as today's entire society is so immersed in the 'Hollywood lifestyle' that this type of mentality has permeated much of mainstream business. You don't have to live in LA., or work in the film business, to relate to Bobby and Charlie."

Wanting "Speed-the-Plow" to go to Broadway, Mamet was savvy enough to know he probably could not mount a rather talky play about one of the world's largest corporate structures: the Hollywood machine.

Therefore, he invited a then-30-year-old sexpot singer named Madonna, seeking to be taken seriously as an actress, to take the role of Karen, a seemingly innocuous but conniving temp secretary in the producer's office. Mamet pitched the idea to Broadway producers, and Madonna succeeded in luring the nonthespians into filling the Royale Theatre.

Enright explains that the Village Playhouse also has produced other Mamet plays: "Glengarry Glen Ross" (made into a film starring Jack Lemmon), "Oleanna" and "American Buffalo."

In the small cast of "Speed-the-Plow," Mark Mixson will portray Bobby Gould with Thomas Heath as Charlie Fox and Elizabeth Ferraro as Karen.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, continuing Sept. 18-19 and 25-27, and 5 p.m. Sept. 28, followed by a talk-back session, at the Village Playhouse, 730 Coleman Blvd., Mount Pleasant. Tickets are $25 for the general public, $23 for senior citizens and $20 for students. Depending on availability, student rush tickets will be sold for $12 at the door. To purchase tickets, call 856-1579 or visit www.villageplayhouse.com.

'Biloxi Blues'

Neil Simon's semiautobiographical comedy, "Biloxi Blues," will take you back to 1943, a time when political correctness was an unknown concept, a time of rawness, stress and take-no-prisoners training for young recruits headed to Europe to fight in World War II.

The Tony Award-winning play, which will open the 77th season of the Footlight Players, will be directed by Sam Evans, who directed Simon's "London Suite" and "The Odd Couple."

The playwright's 10 weeks of military training, which subjected the men to 15-mile hikes, demanding sergeants and recruits with eccentric personalities, was a far cry from Simon's alter-ego, Eugene Morris Jerome's, idea of the Army, which he envisioned as a time of meeting girls at USO dances.

"Biloxi Blues" was produced on Broadway as part of what became known as "the Eugene Trilogy," along with Simon's boyhood recollections in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound."

Alex Hoffmann stars in the show as Jerome, who has left his Brooklyn neighborhood to encounter the bizarre customs of the South. Others in the cast are Stephen Dean, David Barr, Eric Collins, Brian Baker, Patrick Ryan, Mitchell Dukes and Ian Walker.

Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, continuing Sept. 18-20 and 25-27, with 3 p.m. matinees Sept. 14 and 28 at 20 Queen St. Tickets are $25 for the general public; $22 for senior citizens and $15 for students. Members of the military will be admitted for $10 on Sept. 18 and 25. For tickets, call the Footlight Players box office at 722-4487 or visit www.etix.com.

Reach Dottie Ashley at 937-5704 or dashley@postand courier.com.