A round-up of reviews for Speed-the-Plow at the Playhouse Theatre
Reviews are in for Lindsay Posner’s revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow at the Playhouse Theatre starring Lindsay Lohan, Richard Schiff and Nigel Lindsay.
Pretty much all of the critics go out of their way to be kind to Lindsay Lohan, praising her performance although often questioning whether the casting of a controversial Hollywood star in a play about the movie industry is rather cynical.
Overall it seems Nigel Lindsay comes out best from a production that some critics felt was static and underpowered – at least compared to the Old Vic revival with Spacey and Goldblum still fresh in the memory.
BOOK
Book tickets to Speed-the-Plow at the Playhouse Theatre starring Lindsay Lohan
Average Critics Rating
★★★
REVIEWS ROUND-UP
The Guardian
★★
"Lindsay Lohan gives a perfectly creditable performance in this revival of David Mamet’s acerbic, anti-Hollywood satire. Whatever her colourful past, Lohan brings on stage a quality of breathless naivety that is far and away the most interesting thing in Lindsay Posner’s otherwise tame, under-powered revival."Read more
The Independent
★★★
"Lindsay Posner’s entertaining, if slightly underpowered, production... A good but by no means a great night out whose value does not depend on the swirl of publicity occasioned by the female lead."Read more
The Daily Telegraph
★★★
"Attractive, leggy and arrestingly husky of voice Lohan, 28, gives an ample sense of this journey, convincing us she’s an outsider even if certain lines (“I know what it is to be bad”) seem calculated to remind you of her real-life Lalaland exploits.
Yes, her flat delivery needs more work, but so does the rest of the show – saddled with overlong scene-changes and not a patch on the Old Vic production that starred Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum."Read more
Daily Express
"Schiff drawls with surprising weariness through his midlife crisis and the most watchable performance in director Lindsay Posner's production comes from Nigel Lindsay (being called Lindsay seems almost compulsory here) as the struggling wannabe. "Read more
Evening Standard
★★
"Far from being the train wreck that’s been gleefully predicted, Lindsay Lohan’s theatre debut is competent — without being exciting. She has the smallest of the three roles in this revival of David Mamet’s Hollywood satire, and while there’s nothing here to suggest a stellar future on the stage, the sceptics who’ve been dying to see Lohan fall on her face will be disappointed... Casting such a starry theatre novice in a piece that mocks the entertainment industry’s obsession with big names can be construed as cynical or ironic. Either way, the results are a bit tame. "Read more
Daily Mail
★★
"Let's be honest, Lindsay Lohan's stage debut last night was about greed. I do not mean that the play itself is about greed - though it is set in Hollywood, capital of covetousness.
But the casting of Miss Lohan, a vulnerable woman, a sometime star of advertising commercials and children's films, a lady with personal problems which have been splashed over every internet grot site and yellow-press scandal sheet, was the work of agents and producers and commercial sharks who thought they could turn a few quid."
"The set is underwhelming. Mr Schiff undersells his character. Mr Lindsay, most English of actors, is miscast."Read more
The Stage
★★
"the Lindsay we should be talking about is Nigel Lindsay, not Lohan, who is full of sweaty anxiety for the right reasons as he watches his film project threatening to get derailed, for some of the wrong reasons."Read more
Time Out
★★★
"It’s [Lindsay Lohan's] not an extraordinary performance – on press night she had to be prompted on a line – but it’s certainly a reminder that the ‘Mean Girls’ star can act, and I’d imagine that if she can keep turning up on time for the remainder of this run, she’ll get whatever she was hoping for reputationally out of doing a play."Read more
📷 Main photo: A round-up of reviews for Speed-the-Plow at the Playhouse Theatre
