Peoria’s Off-Center Productions is sticking to its stated mission of presenting challenging theatre for both the actor and the audience. David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow is a rarely produced look at show business back in the early-to-mid 80s, before the corporations gobbled up the industry and streamlined them even more into profit centers. This show was a sobering slap when it first opened. Now, it’s more like a fond memory of an industry that at least pretended art was still a driving factor and there was still a chance that a courtesy read might actually have involved some actual courtesy. Novels made into movies like The Player and Swimming with Sharks has taken away a lot of the bite of this play. It still retains some of its power through the meticulous language, or as it says in the program, its “Mametspeak” factor. But Mametspeak is an acting lesson all unto its own. It’s not an easy thing to teach (its roots reside in the acting theory of Sanford Meisner). It’s an even harder thing to reproduce (some great actors of our time have badly stumbled over it, including Jack Lemmon). Director Rob Evans can be forgiven for not getting a pitch-perfect rendition from seasoned actor Bruce Laks in the role of the newly anointed studio development director Bobby Gould, though he’s tantalizingly close. Evans can also be forgiven for the more awkward attempt by the problematic Kristina Rogers as the siren-singing temporary temptress Karen. But in a three-person show, he cannot be forgiven for the casting of Richard Hardt, who ham-fistedly blusters his way through the foil character of lower-level studio paean, Charlie Fox. The proverbial bull in a china shop, Hardt juicily screeches and slurs his way through most of the play until he suddenly discovers subtlety in the seminal third act. It is this glaring hole that topples an otherwise worthy attempt.

Evans staging is strong. He keeps the eye interested while he allows the script to proceed unhindered. He gives Laks a lot of chances to extend his range and show his humor. He drops the ball a bit with his staging for Rogers, letting her sit at wrong times and move in straight lines at others. His and Hardt’s compact set contains everything it needs while allowing flexibility between the three acts.

But it is the tripod with a missing leg that causes Evans his greatest problems. We can allow for unevenness of performance with such a demanding script. Laks’ effort is valiant, and he follows many of the conventions necessitated by the rise and fall of his character. Rogers is passionate, but not seductive. She must draw us all into her impassioned plea, but there are few tactics used to do so. Her reading does not rise or zig zag, it just repeats itself, and that makes for a flat second act. Finally, Hardt initially seems so badly miscast that it is distracting. He shouts, he screams, he bellows. These are the variances of his first and beginning third act choices. This makes the male bonding of Mamet’s opening turn into locker room bravado rather than sharp boardroom banter. There is much more to casual misogyny than sinister, and this is lost. But just when it seems like there’s no reason to have brought Hardt into the role, he turns into a player upon Karen’s entrance in the third act. Where had this subtlety been up until this point? If its lack hadn’t sent you out of the theatre, the shock of its sudden appearance is yet another jolt that takes away from the magnificent plotting that is the climax of this play.

I commend OCP on its mission and desire. This is one time, though, where desire outstrips options.