Featured image- Performers Arkos Armont and John Gaden with director Helen Dallimore. All images by Ben Apfelbaum (c).
This Mamet play, first performed in 1977 is a delicate love letter to the theatre.
The piece charts the relationship between two actors as they work together in various productions over a number of years. Mamet contrasts them well – Robert is an actor of many years experience, coming toward the end of his career. John is an actor just starting out.
The play’s journey is predictable enough. We start off with the actors testing each other’s mettle out. Once this testing period is over, mainly carried out as they joust in the dressing rooms which they share, Robert steps into the teacher/mentor role and ventures to pass on all his great knowledge to John.
John, however, is not the most eager or respectful of students. He just wants to get on and do his shtick and is impatient with ‘the old man’ and his worldly wisdom. Testosterone charged and with plenty of youthful arrogance, John is more than a little peeved and restless.
There’s plenty of twists and turns and light and shade in the piece which runs for ninety minutes before it comes to a well conceived journeys end.
Helen Dallimore’s production serves the play well. The piece comprises numerous small scenes/vignettes brought together.
The centrepiece of the set is the actors dressing room with the various accouterments laid out in front of them, and a mobile clothes wardrobe behind them.
The staging is accomplished. The real life interactions between the actors are well delineated from their stage scenes which are played with their backs to the audience but their performances are seen via screen monitors on either side of the stage.
The work of a couple of stage hands is very deliberately visible through the production as we are ‘planted’ deeply inside the theatre world.
Dallimore has cast well. I can’t think of a better choice than John Gaden to play Robert, and NIDA grad Akos Armont more than holds his own as John.
This is a night in the theatre that has equal parts humour and poignancy.
Recommended, David Mamet’s A LIFE IN THE THEATRE is playing the Eternity Playhouse until December 4.
