Theater People Can Be Tedious

About 30 minutes into the 90 minutes of A Life in the Theatre—David Mamet’s comic look at two actors over the course of several appearances in plays together—I turned to my companion and whispered, “Who are they, the Lunts?” Mamet’s characters seem to be perpetually performing together, like the fabled husband-and-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. About 10 minutes afterward, I finally soothed myself by deciding that these were simply performers at a prestigious regional theater. There was just no other way I could continue to watch the show.

A two-hander that feels far slighter than it should on a Broadway stage (one assumes that the decision to mount it on the Great White Way is a direct result of casting Patrick Stewart as aging, hammy actor Robert), A Life in the Theatre is a very funny, mildly disjointed affair that washes the taste of Mamet’s Race right out of theater-goers’ mouths. Over the course of multiple scenes and several punishing costume changes, Robert and his younger co-star John (my Playbill swears that T.R. Knight plays John, but only his fabulous costumes, from Laura Bauer, left an impression) fawn over one another, fight, argue, rehearse, gossip and somehow always manage to wreak havoc during their performances.

That’s the other problem with A Life in the Theatre: These two are truly bad actors. John is an over-emphatic disaster in the brief glimpse of a war drama we’re treated to; Robert is constantly fumbling over props and wigs. There’s no way either of them could possibly remain employed as consistently as they seem to be, and yet there they are, now in a Russian melodrama, then in a drawing room drama. The design team has done a superlative job of conjuring up a dozen different plays, plus various backstage spaces (the sight of Stewart, freshly sore from attempting to plié at the barre, glowering at Knight’s limberness is a wicked delight); director Neil Pepe, who gave us the best Mamet revival in recent years with Speed-the-Plow, keeps the show going at a crisp pace; and Stewart—almost too sexy for the role—is so adept at conjuring up onstage mayhem that the wispy, one-joke play starts to feel like a less ambitious Noises Off!. But then Mamet turns maudlin about the theater, and the show starts to feel like a slog.

Certainly Stewart and Knight do their best with the slower passages, but there’s only so much life they can inject into extended segment involving John desperately wanting to recite lines to an empty theater while Robert, lonely in his dedication to the theater, jabbers at him from the wings. But Mamet’s obvious affection for the foibles and fables of theater people (along with Stewart’s and Knight’s) still shines through, even as the situations he creates are increasingly implausible. A life in the theater, as messy and heartbreaking as it can be, is still magical enough to draw hundreds of hungry hopefuls to New York City each year. And though it may not have been Mamet’s intention, what A Life in the Theatre proves is that if these two characters can eke out a living doing it, so can those unknowns.

A Life in the Theatre

Through Jan. 2, Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-239-6200; $76.50–$121.50.