Director aims to make Mamet’s words work

“Mamet’s care in word selection is obvious, but also there’s a degree to which his plays are wonderfully rhythmical and musical. It’s part of the energy, part of the information,’’ Walsh says. “He is very meticulous in how he uses grammar and punctuation. There’s a lot of information in the text on what words are the dominant word or operative word in a sentence . . . the language is filled with ellipses and implied language.’’

Walsh directs Robert Pemberton, Gabriel Kuttner, and Aimee Doherty in the New Rep production, Sunday through Nov. 7 at the Watertown theater. Pemberton plays Bobby Gould, a mid-level Hollywood producer with some pull at his studio. Kuttner is Charlie Fox, another producer, who while less successful than Bobby, does have his hooks in a potential hit action film. He wants Bobby to get behind it.

“Certainly Charlie Fox and Bobby Gould have their own shorthand. They’ve been working together so long,’’ Walsh says. “Not unlike a marriage, you begin to fill in the other person’s comments. It’s how little of their language do you need, before you’ve intuited what they’re going to say?’’

Then into their lives steps Karen, a pretty young temp whom Bobby will try to bed to win a bet with Charlie. She has a more idealistic film she says Bobby should tackle instead.

“You’ve got a very male sensibility, very gritty, very sort of ‘guy language,’ and into that walks Karen, this woman who in many respects is rather mysterious,’’ Walsh said. “She brings a polar opposite dynamic to the language and how people communicate. It certainly catches Bobby Gould where he is in his life, in his age, his sensibility - she finds him at an opportune moment. So it’s fun as these paradigms of language get changed in the moment.’’

“You’re looking for signposts on a journey,’’ Pemberton said in a separate conversation. “[Mamet] gives them to you in his punctuation, in what he italicizes, in the very specific words he chooses to use, in the shortness of the sentences. That’s how you each find the rhythm.’’

The play tackles themes of art versus entertainment, idealism versus cynicism, loyalty versus betrayal, and all in less than 90 minutes. And while much has changed since “Speed-the-Plow’’ debuted on Broadway in 1988, the basic realities of life in Hollywood remain the same, Walsh said. In fact, Hollywood belt-tightening means that even the production budgets in the script didn’t have to be updated, he said.

Walsh says he has known Mamet casually for nearly two decades, since a benefit reading of Mamet’s work when the playwright lived in the Boston area. He worked briefly on a couple of Mamet films, including “State and Main,’’ which was shot in Massachusetts. “I play a state trooper. I arrest Alec Baldwin, so I have a scene with Alec Baldwin and David Paymer. The other bit was in ‘The Spanish Prisoner’; I was Steve Martin’s stunt double. At the end of the movie he gets shot with a stun gun, and they asked me to come in and pull that off for him.’’

Perhaps more relevant, Walsh directed Mamet’s “A Life in the Theatre’’ for a New Jersey theater company before tackling “Speed-the-Plow.’’

What’s Walsh like as a director? “He allows each actor to go through their process. He’s very patient,’’ Pemberton says, noting that’s probably because Walsh is also an actor. Among several times they’ve worked together, the first was a Merrimack Repertory Theatre production of “Our Town’’ perhaps 15 years ago, when Walsh played his father-in-law, Pemberton says.

There have been numerous productions of “Speed-the-Plow’’ with stellar casts, from the 1988 teaming of Joe Mantegna, Ron Silver, and Madonna to a recent Broadway version that became notorious when star Jeremy Piven dropped out, claiming high mercury level, perhaps from excessive sushi consumption.

“I had the cast over for an informal reading before we got started,’’ Walsh says, “and coincidentally sushi was served, so I think we’re dispelling the notion that there are any bad omens around it.’’

“Speed-the-Plow’’ opens Sunday at the New Rep and continues through Nov. 7. Tickets, $35-$54, at 617-923-8487 or www.newrep.org.