#publisher Daily Express Theatre RSS Feed Daily Express Search Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. sunday_express_logo ____________________ (BUTTON) * Find us on Facebook * Follow us on Twitter * Check us on Google+ * Subscribe to our rss feed Daily Horoscope Our Apps Top 10 Our Paper Paper Archive Weather 4° London * HOME * News * Showbiz & TV * Sport * Comment * Finance * Travel * Entertainment * Life & Style * Films * Gaming * Theatre * Music * Books * Puzzles * Home * Entertainment * Theatre * Speed the Plow: Lindsay Lohan is not a car crash on stage Speed the Plow: Lindsay Lohan is not a car crash on stage 3 / 5 stars Speed the Plow WHAT a difference the billing makes. By Simon Edge PUBLISHED: 22:31, Thu, Oct 2, 2014 Lindsay Lohan does not put in a great performance in Speed the Plow but is not a car crash Lindsay Lohan does not put in a great performance in Speed the Plow but is not a car crash[SIMON ANNAUD] Last time David Mamet's ultra-cynical satire on male Hollywood power was in London, it starred Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey. They played the studio executive and his lowly producer buddy whose plans for a career-boosting piece of worthless box-office gold are derailed when a temporary secretary gets too serious about a worthy-but-ghastly novel to which she was meant to give a 'courtesy read'. The piece was thus a joust between these two mesmerising men. This time it's all about the temp, even though she only really features in the second of three acts. That's because she's played by Hollywood wild child Lindsay Lohan. The message boards have been gleefully reporting that Lindsay Lohan doesn't know her lines The message boards have been gleefully reporting that Lindsay Lohan doesn't know her lines [SIMON ANNAUD] A husky Lindsay Lohan doesn't look especially confident on stage – how would she, given the burden of negative expectation? It's her face on the poster and programme, and the whole thing has been sold on her celebrity. If she has a reputation as a director's nightmare who doesn't turn up to rehearsals back home, so much the better: who wouldn't pay to see a historic A-list car-crash? The message boards have been gleefully reporting that she doesn't know her lines. One paper even noted that she reads half the script from a book, ignoring the inconvenient fact that her character is meant to do just that. I'm sorry to be the bearer of disappointing tidings, but pile-up it ain't. A husky Lohan doesn't look especially confident on stage – how would she, given the burden of negative expectation? But on press night she only needed one prompt. Lindsay Lohan isn't just some ditzy starlet who let the money and fame go to her head Lindsay Lohan isn't just some ditzy starlet who let the money and fame go to her head [SIMON ANNAUD] The audience collectively winced for her, but in road-accident terms, that's no more than a broken rear light. Lohan isn't just some ditzy starlet who let the money and fame go to her head. She has always been a ravishingly good actress, from her debut playing 11-year-old twins in The Parent Trap onwards. In that context, this is not a great performance. She seems uncomfortable with the barrage of interrupted sentences in Mamet's script, putting full stops where there should be dashes, and it's not obvious that Richard 'West Wing' Schiff's head of production would be so blinded by her passion for the book as to risk his career on a movie version. Nigel Lindsay in Speed the Plow at the Playhouse Theatre in London Nigel Lindsay in Speed the Plow at the Playhouse Theatre in London [SIMON ANNAUD] But it's part of the flimsiness of this verbally thrilling but morally tawdry play that he doesn't actually need to. He's a powerful middle-aged man who is daft enough to believe that this young beauty genuinely desires him. When that illusion is stripped away, we're back to cynical business-as-usual. 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. He's an unrepentant misogynist whose greatest insult to a man is "you squat to pee", but that's what passes for sympathetic in Mamet's world. If the production were funnier the moral bankruptcy might matter less. The laughs don't come fast enough enough for that, but at least there are none at anyone's expense, as the worst of the preview reports had us believe. • Speed-the-Plow is at the Playhouse Theatre in London till November 29. 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