VINTAGE MAMET LACKS ROBUST FLAVOR

Last year, T.R. Knight left a lucrative TV role on the high profile Grey’s Anatomy because he wasn’t fulfilled as an actor. Â  The world has been waiting to see if he’ll fall flat on his face ever since. Â  David Mamet’s unsatisfying A Life in the Theatre may not be the forehead-splitter that many anticipated, but it’s still a stumble in the wrong direction for Knight.

Knight returns to his theatrical roots by taking on the role of John, a young actor envied by his frequent co-star Robert (Patrick Stewart), an aging thespian bent on depositing wisdom almost as much as he is bent on withdrawing youth. Â  Why they always work together is not divulged (one must presume they are repertory members), but their relationship is not Knight’s main problem. Â  What makes this a disappointing venture for him is the leap from a character with reduced screen time to a character with reduced substance.

Much more of an acting exercise than a play, A Life in the Theatre is a playground to demonstrate skill but not heart or passion. Â  Consisting of over twenty scenes on and offstage, the two accomplished actors exchange snappy dialogue that is almost always pregnant with frustration and fears, but seldom gives birth. But that’s Mamet. Robert gets less competent, John gets more annoyed, the monotony of the play’s format gets tiresome. Â  The characters don’t evolve, they simply move from one role to the next, punctuated with Kenneth Posner’s needle-sharp lighting design and only a hint of a life outside of the stage in-between. As a result, our investment in them and the characters that they embody is as brief as the span of a commercial, sometimes shorter.

While Stewart and Knight break their legs to the best of their abilities under Neil Pepe’s direction, their performances are enhanced by Laura Bauer’s costumes and Santo Loquasto’s scenic design. Â  Every getup makes Captain Jean-Luc Picard less regal and almost human and a lost-at-sea scene is particularly amusing when you get a peek behind the scenes’â€literally’â€look at the boat.

If A Life in the Theatre is Mamet’s commentary on acting, he must have a love/hate perception of the craft. Â  Here, theatre is all-consuming’â€more so for Robert than John’â€and that would be great if the characters remained fervent about their profession. Â  But they don’t. Â  Years peel away, the labor loses love, and relationships aren’t formed so that this once illustrious career becomes nothing more than a bunch of stamps on a time card. Sigh.

cindypierre @ stageandcinema.com

photos by Carol Rosegg

scheduled to close January 2, 2011 at time of publication
for tickets, visit http://lifeinthetheatre.com