The Speed-the-Plow Preview

Steve Scarpa (left), Megan Chenot and J. Kevin Smith in the New Haven Theater Company production of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, directed by George Kulp.

Speed-the-Plow, David Mamet’s snappy episode of ruthlessness and immorality in a Hollywood producer’s office, opens tonight at UpCrown Studios on Crown Street. It’s a new venue for New Haven Theater Company, the nearly 20-year-old community troupe which was borne at the BAR nightclub and has had several distinct regimes. UpCrown, part of the LoRicco Tower empire on Crown between Temple and College, was christened as a theater space just last summer by Theater Four, with their commissioned work Salvage by George Brent.

Speed-the-Plow is one NHTC’s one-weekend-only indulgences, one of those labor-of-love affairs where company members get to rally around each other’s passion for certain scripts and authors. (Last year’s example would be Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio, site-specifically staged in the CT Ultra Radio studios on College Street.) This time the adoration is especially widely shared. One of the breakthrough shows for this current line-up of New Haven Theater Company was a production of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, staged in a bank building on Church Street. Two of the performers from that show, Steve Scarpa and J. Kevin Smith, reunite for this one. A third veteran from GGR, George Kulp, is directing S-t-P. The only newcomer is Megan Chenot, who shone as the heroine of NHTC recent staging of Urinetown and now plays the attractive secretary who becomes a gamepiece in a bout of one-upmanship between two unscrupulous powermongers.

I spoke to Kulp about how the company came back to Mamet. Kulp, who’s done a lot of television acting and memorably played the King of Scotland as a gladhanding American politician in Eric Ting (& Shakespeare)’s Macbeth 1969 at Long Wharf last year, had never performed in a Mamet show  before Glengarry. Steve Scarpa, who’ll play Charlie Fox, knew the play, and also suggested Smith to play wheeler-dealer Bobby Gould.

“This is the same kind of razor-sharp dialogue” as Glengary Glen Ross, Kulp exults. It had to be a good fit for the collective-styled company. “When we get together as a company, we throw things about which are good for the company,” the director explains.

NHTC’s Glengarry Glen Ross was notable for bringing out a lighter side of the play which is often buried in its mordant, bitter, characterizations of end-of-the-line real estate salesmen. The production opened with an original motif—a silent montage of office pranks and hi-jinks, setting the scene and lightening what would swiftly become a pitch-black mood. Speed-the-Plow is more funny on the face of it, though perhaps no less dire or despicable. “It’s a black comedy,” Kulp says. “But we’re discovering a lot of humor. It’s written right into the dialogue.”

The new space took some adjustment, since NHTC had become accustomed to the empty storefront on Court Street where they’d staged Urinetown, Odets’ Waiting for Lefty and Steve Martin’s Picasso in the Lapin Agile. When Theater Four used the space for Salvage, they had to cover windows and chose to create a central stage area with bleachers on the sides. For Speed-the-Plow, New Haven Theater Company is going with a more conventional set-up, and are using the space largely as is. “The play doesn’t require a set,” Kulp says. “We wouldn’t want to do an elaborate set.” The movie-office ambience will be set by a soundtrack of movie-related music and posters of Hollywood classics.

Despite the disreputable characters and overt sexism and sarcasm of the play, George Kulp says the process of directing Speed-the-Plow for NHTC has been “just a pleasure.” The new location and the continuance of the company feel comprises “a step up for us,” he says. Godspeed.

Speed-the-Plow plays Nov. 14, 16 & 17 at 7 p.m. at 216 Crown Street, New Haven. Tickets available at  www.newhaventheatercompany.com