Last night's London's West End saw the theatrical debut of Lindsay Lohan with the official opening night of David Mamet's Speed the Plow. And Lilo, folks, is back.The piece was David Mamet's Speed the Plow, perhaps most famous as the vehicle that provided Madonna's Broadway debut in 1988 (and also led to the great Jeremy Piven Sushi-gate of 2009). Being a senior citizen theater queen, I saw Madonna in the original production and she was surprisingly good in Mamet's story of three mildly repulsive movie business archetypes who wreak havoc on each other. Naturally Lohan has been bathed in the glare of relentless publicity of whether she'd be able to remember her lines (which she struggled with during previews), show up for eight performances a week and make the grade in the big leagues of live theater. She did all three last night.
We first see Lohan looking healthy and gorgeous in a Saint Laurent sexy secretary look. She's charming and believable as a temp filling in at the office of a movie executive. As the play goes on, Lohan peels back more and more layers. The deeper her performance got, the more impressed I was. Her costars Nigel Lindsay and Richard Schiff were also top drawer and the three played off each other beautifully. The Guardian said she gave, "a deftly delineated characterization." The Telegraph said she "made her stage debut with a surprising-and smoldering-degree of style."
Lohan earned waves of applause from the audience as she set off a gold glitter tube at the curtain call, showering the stage with squares of gold paper. Some might have come to watch a star who's struggled fall, but instead they were reminded that the 28-year-old is a good actress who can deliver.