Last week Lindsey Lohan aroused speculation at a London fashion show when she told the New York Times she was preparing for her first theatrical role, as "Karen" in a fall West End revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow produced by Danny Moar and Simon Friend for Theater Royal Bath Productions. Now Official London Theatre reports that it's true. The casting of the Mean Girls actress has been confirmed.
Additional casting has yet to be announced.
Director Lindsay Posner, who will take charge of the new production, has a track record of guiding major stagings of Mamet's plays: American Buffalo, Oleanna, Sexual Perversity In Chicago, Romance and A Life In The Theatre all figure in his long C.V. In his distinguished career he has also helmed productions of Shakespeare, Chekov, Oscar Wilde, Alan Ayckbourn, Terrence Rattigan, Michael Frayn, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard and many more, as well as classic musicals.
Posner is experienced too in working with performers known primarily for their screen work, having directed Juliette Lewis in Fool for Love, Julia Stiles in Oleanna, and Matthew Perry, Minnie Driver and Hank Azaria in Sexual Perversity in Chicago. So if anyone can turn Lindsey Lohan, long known for unreliability and out-of-control behavior, into a creature of the stage, it might be he.
"I'm nervous but I'm excited," Lohan told the Times. As, we imagine, may be those yet-to-be-announced co-stars. Speed-the-Plow runs Sept. 24-Nov. 29 at the Playhouse Theater.
