Speed-the-Plow | |
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![]() Poster for the 1988 Broadway introduction of the play | |
Written by | David Mamet |
Directed by | Gregory Mosher |
Characters |
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Date premiered | 1988 |
Place premiered | Royale Theatre, New York City |
Original language | English |
Genre | Drama |
Speed-the-Plow is a 1988 play by David Mamet that is a satirical dissection of the American movie business. As stated in The Producer's Perspective, "this is a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000)".[1] As quoted in The Producer's Perspective, Jack Kroll of Newsweek described Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."[1]
The play sets its context with an epigraph (not to be recited in performance) by William Makepeace Thackeray, from his novel Pendennis, contained in a frontispiece: It starts: "Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplating it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest?"[2]