So Jeff and I saw SPEED-THE-PLOW yesterday, and it got me thinking about commitment.
SPEED-THE-PLOW got some probably unwanted press because of the early abrupt exit of one of its stars, Jeremy Piven, who claimed he had become very ill due to mercury poison, brought on by overconsumption of sushi. It's possible that Piven really is ill. When I saw the show, very early in the run, Piven seemed tired and out-of-sorts, but i wrote it off to the struggle to master Mamet's rat-a-tat-tat. It's hard stuff.
What's pretty clear, based on the press--and the response of the cast, crew, and even David Mamet himself, is that Piven had managed to build up zero sympathy (or "social capital," as the sociologists say) from his community at the time of his leaving. The blogs and tabloids have gone to town speculating about Piven's late night habits. Raul Esparza, his co-star, made it clear there was no love lost, that the first time he'd felt like the cast was a team was when he and co-star Elisabeth Moss had acted with Jordon Lage, the show's male understudy. Esparza announced this from the stage of the play, no less.
This is a good lesson to learn. "It's a people business," Mamet says in his play. And because it's a people business, Norbert Leo Butz, a lovely (Tony-winning!) actor who would probably never gotten a chance to do the show otherwise because he's been pigeonhold as a musical comedy whiz (WICKED, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS), gets to feel a kind of love from cast and audience that Piven never would.
90 percent of life is showing up, Woody Allen once said.
Butz learned the part in under three weeks and came in as Piven's replacement just before Christmas. We saw him yesterday, and it was definitely funner than the first time--especially as you could feel the audience rooting for Butz...to win. The curtain call was a love fest, with Esparza, Butz, and Moss bowing together, goofing around, clearly a team.
Butz hadn't just shown up, he'd actually nailed the lines, come up with new business, and brought a poignancy to the difficult scene between him and Elisabeth Moss, where he's revealed as a schmuck seeking salvation. Butz's character may be sleazy, but his performance has all the earmarks of a triumphant underdog. Go see it.
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