Lindsay Lohan, problem child of Hollywood, is trying to fix her image with a run in a West End play

It is early evening in the West End of London, and outside the Playhouse Theatre near Charing Cross, couples are rushing from nearby stations fishing tickets from handbags, while others leap from taxis or wait anxiously for friends outside the door.

These are scenes familiar from across the capital's theatre district, but there is something very different about the audience for this preview performance of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow.

London theatre audiences tend to be predominantly middle aged, but the majority of those hurrying to the Playhouse are in their 20s or 30s, some of them even younger, many of them fashionably dressed young women. They do not, for the most part, look like the usual audience for the cerebral Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.

"Oh, Lindsay Lohan is the draw - that's how I heard about this," says student Lisanne Stock, who has persuaded her grandmother to bring her to the play as a birthday treat.

After a week of previews, the Hollywood star last week made her formal debut on the London stage. The production will run until November 29.The star of Parent Trap and Mean Girls is far from the first big screen name to take a whirl on the London stage - Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon and many others have sought to bump up their actorly kudos with a stint in the West End. But there are famous names, and then there is Lohan.

"On the night of the first preview, USA Today listed Lindsay's appearance as one of the five most important things happening in the world that day," says the play's director, Lindsay Posner. "We were just behind the bombing of Syria."