Hollywood is a soul-destroying place, didn't you know? Shocking, isn't it? It's full of egocentric greedy men who have no taste or decency! Well, I never. Such are the revelations of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, a sledgehammer blow of a satire, powered by performances as obnoxious as the play itself.

Jeff Goldblum plays a generically slimy producer, who green lights every film that follows last year's successful model. His assistant, played by Kevin Spacey, feeds off his superior's success, and silently craves the attention people pay to his boss. Things go awry when one day a glamorous brunette temp disrupts this passive-aggressive idyll, by suggesting they take on something that actually means something.

The main problem with Speed-the-Plow is that it is exceptionally lazy. Mamet clearly wants to condemn Hollywood's excesses, but ill advisedly he empathises too much with the two central characters. It's not pointed or detached enough to be an effective satire, and it's not well written enough to achieve much pathos.

The result is an apology for the horrible greed and excess of the perpetrators of this system. What's worse it seems to condemn the secretary for interrupting the fun the men are having. She's underwritten to the point of being one-dimensional. Mamet's treatment of her borders on the misogynistic.

Although stargazers might flag up the fact they went to see a play featuring Goldblum and Spacey for many a dinner party to come, I couldn't wait for the two to stop acting. Their performances are cringingly self-indulgent. Practically frothing at the mouth delivering the rapid-fire dialogue of the first act, they are quite insufferable. Goldblum manages to claw some of his dignity back by being outstanding in the play's final scene, but Spacey is not playing to his strengths at all. Laura Michelle Kelly (pictured right) delivers a good non-performance in her cardboard cutout role.

Despite almost unanimous critical acclaim, I am going to be the dissenting voice. Speed-the-Plow is populist theatre in the worst sense of the term - crass, noisy and superficial. It is not totally without merit, but it is such a nasty piece of work that it is not worth sitting through the remaining 85 minutes to find the five minutes of good material buried in there.

Speed-the-Plow, directed by Matthew Warchus, continues at The Old Vic until April 26. For bookings call 0870 060 6628 (www.oldvictheatre.com).