For nearly as long as there has been a Hollywood, there has been art made about the superficiality and greed of the people who live there. But no one can capture the rapid, crude dialogue of the power-makers as David Mamet can. Perhaps best known for writing about real estate tools in Glengarry Glen Ross, he turned his attention to Hollywood tools in his 1988 play, Speed-the-Plow. In the current Broadway revival of Speed, Jeremy Piven plays the lead, Bobby Gould, who has recently been promoted to Head of Production at an unnamed movie studio. Gould, uncomfortable with his newfound ability to grant favors, is torn between producing a criminally dumb blockbuster, a guaranteed hit that would make his friend and colleague (Raúl Esparza) a rich man, or developing his sexy secretary (Elisabeth Moss)’s pet project, an art-house downer.

The similarities between Moss and Piven’s characters and their television alter-egos, Peggy on AMC’s Mad Men and Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage, has not been lost on journalists or audiences. (The woman selling t-shirts in the lobby of the Ethel Barrymore Theater informed one ticket-holder: “If you like him as Ari, you’ll love him in this!”) Piven told Melena Ryzik of The New York Times that he was drawn to the role of Bobby Gould because “he has the availability of stillness,” perhaps in contrast with the charming, high-energy man-children the actor usually plays. But while Bobby Gould is certainly a contemplative soul, there seems no room for “stillness” in this production — all bustle, histrionics, and inspired moments of comedy. Piven, with his puppy-dog good looks, earns our sympathy but not always our attention, as he is upstaged by Moss’s vamping and Esparza’s manic expressiveness.

An entertaining 90 minutes, the production is pretty hilarious but falls flat in developing the relationship between Gould and his secretary, Karen. Moss’s Karen seduces her boss with sex rather than the more provocative alternative — the kind of spiritual “purity” that Gould jokes about but secretly craves. Karen, then, reads as a less compelling version of Peggy in Mad Men, a character whose femme fatale qualities are subtle and, thus, far more compelling.

As a result, Karen is not a worthy adversary to Charlie Fox, Gould’s fellow exec. Esparza’s performance truly stands out as an exhibit of the actor’s total lack of vanity. From his spastic physicality to his crazed, blood-shot eyes, he inhabits the role of the ambitious businessman, whose every joke is tinged with malice and jealousy. It is his red, sweaty face that you will recall the next time you’re at your local cineplex and ask yourself: Who makes this trash?

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The show opens October 23, 2008 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.

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