Susan Granger’s review of “A Life in the Theatre” (Gerald Schoenfeld Theater)
Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight team up for David Mamet’s two-person comedy.that explores the rigors and indignities of being an actor. Chatting only with each other for 90 minutes – no intermission – they lament their hardships, recall their humiliations and reveal their loneliness and inner turmoil.
Smoothly staged by director Neil Pepe, it’s – nevertheless – a tedious, unwieldy series of 26 trifling vignettes. The vain, imperious elder Robert (Patrick Stewart) behaves like a leading man, belying the truth that he’s most often just a supporting player in a local repertory company, while John (T.R. Knight) is not only eager to learn but also to please. Their egocentricity runs rampant, as each grasps for praise and acknowledgement. But there’s an underlying sense of desperation that resonates with a disconcerting sadness.
Perhaps best known as Jean-Luc Picard, the Enterprise captain who succeeded William Shatner on TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Sir Patrick Stewart – he was knighted last June – has an equally admirable reputation with the Royal Shakespeare Company, having appeared in more than 40 of their productions. His film credits also include three “X-Men” movies. In addition to his considerable stage work, T.R. Knight attained national recognition in TV’s “Gray’s Anatomy.”
Despite the actors’ theatrical prowess and obvious rappport, this featherweight, not-very-funny Mamet play was never intended for a large Broadway theater. Back in 1977, as somewhat of a cartoon of the reality that goes on backstage, it enjoyed a long run at the Theater de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theater) in Greenwich Village. So it seems curiously out of place and certainly overpriced for what it offers audiences, despite Santo Loquasto’s evocative set, Laura Bauer’s authentic costuming, Kenneth Posner’s effective lighting and J. David Brimmer’s fight choreography. And when this comedy concludes, there’s no sense of completion, only melancholy.