Review: Speed-the-Plow (Dionysus Contemporary Theatre)
After nearly a year since A Midsummer Night’s Dream, personally a disappointing production from Dionysus Contemporary Theatre, director Olivia Yan brings us Speed-the-Plow, the 1988 award-winning play by David Mamet, with a star-dubbed cast of Anthony Wong, Jan Lamb, and Rosa Maria Velasco.
By lowering my expectations as well as to keep fresh by entering a play which I have not come across before, I would say that this production of a play as a satire of the movie business is probably Miss Yan’s best work since Equus, but it can still be much more than the result on stage.
I always have a perturbed feeling of entering a Dionysus Contemporary Theatre production. Miss Yan is a director who I have admired since her Theatre Ensemble years for the reason that she has a dark and ruthless vision that I always can connect with.
However, since her production of Equus, which launched the Dionysus Contemporary Theatre (co-artistic-directed with Mr Wong), Miss Yan somehow has not delivered a production that is personally a total success.
Miss Yan’s Equus was a blast as the debut of the company in 2014, but her God of Carnage (co-directed with Fong Chun Kit) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream just did not totally deliver to her own strength, especially Dream which I was disappointed on the execution of the translated-text and the scenography, even though I can still see a unique vision from Miss Yan.
Speed-the-Plow directly hits back Miss Yan’s familiar ground, that is the theme of violence and solitude.
For a person who does not profess any knowledge of the play but knows Mamet’s style, I can see that Speed-the-Plow is the solid, classic Mamet: the use of language and words that can be a sharp weapon, and at the end, Mamet shows us that words can kill, or can manipulate.
However, Speed-the-Plow also suggests that it is more than just a play of violence and taboo, or just making sarcastic commentary on the movie business. It is a play that strips down to a skeleton of a debate between heaven and hell, between virtue and survival, and how a human would act between the persuasions from both sides while he is mixed-up in life.
After all, the title ‘Speed-the-Plow’ clearly references back to the phrase ‘God speed the plow,’ which has to do with industry. It has to do with work, a basic mean for a person to survive in a capitalistic world. Mamet is questioning whether to ‘speed the plow’ is the right thing to do as a human.
With that, I am presented by a three-act play that is full of subtexts and hyper-realistic scenarios, that requires a higher demand of reading.
It really has to do with the translation of the play by Chris Shum that makes the night a satisfying one. By putting the setting in Hong Kong, Mr Shum basically produces a version of the play that the Hong Kong audience can certainly relate to. The Hong Kong movie industry is so different from Hollywood that Mamet’s play needs to be highly adapted in order to fits the contemporary sense of the play within the context of Hong Kong, while the spirit of the play is still intact.
I think it is a clever touch by changing the movie sold by Charlie Fox, a long-time associate of the protagonist Bobby Gould, into a prison movie slated with Chow Yuen Fat as the leading man. One must associates that movie mentioned in the play to Prison on Fire, a prison movie starring Chow in the 1980s. It matches the period when Mamet’s play was written, but it also does not sound so off from nowadays Hong Kong as well.
It also suggests a lot of imaginations on whether the apocalypse mentioned in the play is about Hong Kong in the 1980s or in 2017. The thing is, both are correct. If you think about the situation of Hong Kong in 1980s as well as in recent years, you will get my drift. That is a smart move.
And thus, we get the sense that, Miss Yan’s production of Speed-the-Plow is about Hong Kong, or even so, about the current world that is under the limelight.
I get that, but the whole production just has not lifted up to that vision.
I appreciate the performances of the three actors. Mr Wong’s Bobby Gould distinctively shows his dilemma of choosing between Charlie and Karen, the new assistant of Bobby who later lures him to give up Charlie’s proposal of the Chow Yuen Fat blockbuster. Mr Lamb’s Charlie Fox is charming but also full of rage that I can feel that Mr Lamb has evolved with the role, a marriage between Charlie’s presence of domination and Mr Lamb’s own charisma as an artiste.
Miss Velasco as Karen also deserves recognition as the determined assistant. Her performance in Act 2 really shines out with her tentative interactions with Mr Wong.
However, I feel that the deep relationships between these characters are not brightly carved out as the chemistry between these actors is only half-baked.
I get that Mamet’s play is a comedy. I get that the jokes are funny, but the fine line between a joke and a stab is vivid through out the play, and I dare to say that this is the foundation of why these people are in this entangled triangle. The cruder the words are, the closer the relationships, and this has to be established in Act 1, to tell me the complicated relationship between Bobby and Charlie.
It is crucial to point out the ambiguity of Bobby and Charlie, whether they are confidants to each other, or actually, tools instead, so that I can invest my emotions and at the end view the dilemma of Bobby as my own. Now, I see three terrific actors playing their own part, but I do not see an ensemble, and Mamet’s play severely needs it.
This is also worsened by the weird design of the production. This space, obviously an inspiration from any Jan Versweyveld’s design of an Ivo van Hove’s production, is bizarrely full of realistic props that are not suggesting open space but a realistic set.
There are way too many white boxes to suggest that this is a newly founded office, while it also has a lot of lighting at the back, saying that it is also a studio. The placement of the tables and sofas are very realistic, yet the white space suggests more of a symbolic environment, with the lighting being a motif. At the end, the design forces the potential metaphorical space to succumb to realism.
With that, the production is pulling a tight rope that can never be released. As an audience, I feel so off by the visuals that even though the performances are more than average, I cannot totally get into the world as the world on stage is dressed by two styles of design. Thus, I can only read the vision, but I cannot feel the impact from the vision.
And that is when I have a feeling that Miss Yan’s ultimate vision of the play got slashed by the unnecessary realistic elements. There are bits and bobs of her vision that are distinctive and refreshing, that can potentially dig deep into Mamet’s world, other than the laughing-out-loud moments, but the result has not thrived to its fullest.
Production Information
Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet at Lyric Theatre, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts
A Version by Chris Shum in Cantonese, directed by Olivia Yan
A Dionysus Contemporary Theatre Production
Through 16th September 2017
Originally published at The Typewriter.
