Jeff Goldblum (top)
& Laura Michelle Kelly
|
Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum and Olivier Award winner Laura Michelle Kelly will join Kevin Spacey in the Old Vic Theatre’s 20th Anniversary staging of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow. The comedy, directed by Matthew Warchus, will run from 1 February through 26 April 2008 at the theater.
Goldblum, who will be making his London stage debut, starred on Broadway in Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Moony Shapiro Songbook, The Play What I Wrote and The Pillowman. During a 35 year career in Hollywood, he has starred in films such as Thank God It’s Friday, The Big Chill, The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, Jurassic Park, Powder, Independence Day and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Current Lord of the Rings star Laura Michelle Kelly won an Olivier for originating the title role in Mary Poppins. Other stage credits include Beauty and the Beast in the West End and Fiddler on the Roof in Broadway. She can be seen as the Beggar Woman in the current film version of Sweeney Todd.
In the satire set in Hollywood, Bobby Gould (Spacey) engages in a verbal boxing match with co-producer Charlie Fox (Goldblum) as to whether to film another bad blockbuster or to put himself on the line with an adaptation of a spiritual, apocalyptic novel offered to him by his beautiful secretary (Kelly).
When the play originally premiered at Broadway’s Royale Theatre in 1988, the two men were played by Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver, with the secretary played by Madonna. It was subsequently seen at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre in January 1989, where Gregory Mosher (who also staged the Broadway premiere) directed a cast that included Rebecca Pidgeon (now Mamet’s wife). It has since been revived in London in a production that starred Mark Strong, Patrick Marber and Kimberly Williams.