What a rare, theatrical triumph Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum achieve with their virtuoso double act in Speed-the-Plow.

By sheer acting firepower they help disguise the fact that David Mamet's famous assault on the philistine materialism of the Hollywood movie industry, its immoralists, hustlers and dim-wits, packs a pretty soft punch.

Mamet lands plenty of clever, verbal blows with the butch, sprawling swagger of his movie producers' diction, yet the plot, with its broad anti-Hollywood satire, morality narrative and angry critique of American capitalism, makes two thrusting movie producers, a seductive film studio secretary and two opposing film projects seem clichéd, caricatured instruments in the play's contrived design. So thank heavens, therefore, for Spacey and Goldblum who make the evening fun.

Spacey has long been a master of full-frontal menace and vituperation, but he surpasses himself in the climactic act of Speed-the-Plow as Charlie Fox the freelance film producer.

Fox is forced to realise that his multi-million dream of glory, which comes in the shape of a silly new blockbuster about male rape in prisons, may come to nothing.

For Goldblum's elegantly vacuous studio head or air-head, Bobby Gould, has fallen for a temporary secretary, Laura Michelle Kelly's well-upholstered but pallid Karen, and her own hippie choice of film script.

Gould, to whom the hyper-tall, rake-thin, imposing Goldblum lends an air of dream-struck serenity, has had his head and small, truculent mind turned so far that he unbelievably prepares to commit professional suicide, by proposing to back Karen's choice for a movie - a book about radiation sent by God to change the world.

Spacey then turns upon the senior partner in an outburst of contempt and physical violence. Snarling, sweating and shouting, hands gesticulating in gestures of dismissal, Spacey's Fox, always the pushy confident hustler, lets physical rip as he lands blow upon blow on the bloodied Gould, who cowers upon the floor, his minuscule supply of natural dignity lost.

Fox, as Spacey plays him here, is clearly a man fuelled by self-loathing rather than self-confidence. Fox subsequently plays an all-too-easily flashed sexual trump card, thereby dissuading Gould from proceeding with the Radiation project.

And Mamet manages to bring Speed-the-Plow to a bitter-sweet ending, the two producers reconciled and returned to their original project.

Matthew Warchus's dynamically choreographed production encourages Spacey and Goldblum to maintain terrific physical momentum. They pace and circle Rob Howell's film office set as if charged with over-forties, testosterone energy, excited by the pleasures of wheeler-dealing in Hollywood as they deliver their chafing, needling repartee to each other.

Laura Michelle Kelly, a notable leading lady in musicals, makes an odd choice for the role of Karen, whose sexual power and eagerness to spellbind Bobby with post flower-power mysticism she does not convey in a sometimes inaudible performance.

There's finally something misogynistic about Mamet's depiction and treatment of Karen, who emerges as an intense sexual opportunist who is allowed to win no sympathy, while the men are let off lightly. Even so the Spacey/Goldblum combination proves a winning one.