David Mamet’s early, two-hander play is a love letter to the acting profession that wallows in the artifice of performance, theatrical traditions, the bond of actors and that intriguing and alluring mystery that is the smell of the greasepaint. But, rather like our own rose tinted views of a life in the theatre, it’s a smug, self-indulgent affair that is as shallow as the profession itself.

A Life In the Theatre starts with two actors discussing that night’s performance with congratulatory tit bits and mutual slaps on the back. They get onto the subject of the audience and how “astute” they had been for enjoying the play’s deeper levels, and suddenly you realise that you’re being challenged into being equally as perceptive and attentive. It’s a clever devise that immediately involves the audience in a contract with the players to live up to their make-believe hype – but it’s a hard battle.

Through a series of loosely connected sketches, Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson chart the relationship between the eager young pupil on the start of the ladder of success and the old hand on its final descent.

Over the next 85 minutes they show us the life of a repertory actor, mocking an array of theatrical styles from World War dramas to Chekhov, with operating theatres, shipwrecks (“We’re never getting out of this alive are we?”, “We haven’t got a chance in hell.”), and chainmail thrown in for comedic potential along with missing cues, late entrances and forgotten lines.

However, these ‘onstage’ scenes are less successful than the backstage conversations, which have a relaxed intimacy and allow you a glimpse into the life of an actor. These scenes are also greeted with sighs of appreciation as the actors’ strip down to their underwear to change for the next performance. But we learn nothing about the lives of the characters’ outside of the stage, which makes it difficult to become emotional involved.

In one amusing episode Stewart realises that his zip has broken moments before being needed onstage. He calls to Jackson for help and he obliges by getting down on his knees and pinning up the fly while Stewart cries, “come on, just put it in… will you stick it in.”

Stewart gives a subtle and strangely sexual performance of a man whose career descent takes him to the brink of suicide. His attraction to Jackson is shown in brief, tender caresses and longing looks, but he is just as in love with his youthful vigour and inexperience as he is with his body.

Jackson begins the show as an attentive pupil, but he soon tires of the older actor and stops his fawning in order to tell Stewart to “shut up” about his ramblings. It’s a sweet performance, but doesn’t show us the raw potential of an actor on the rise.

In his book on acting, True and False, Mamet says: “I wanted to be an actor, but it seemed that my affections did not that way tend. I learned to write and direct so that I could stay in the theatre, and be with that company of people.”

Mamet’s love of theatre is obvious, but it’s from an insider’s point of view and A Life In the Theatre fails to ignite his passion in others or glorify the mythical glamour of backstage life. Instead, it all seems rather pretentious.

A Life In the Theatre, by David Mamet
Apollo Theatre
Shaftesbury Avenue
London, W1
0870 890 1101

2 February-30 April 2005

David Mamet’s most recent publications include the acting books, True and False and Three Uses of the Knife. Buy them online and save some money to put towards the DVD of the film adaptation of his controversial play, Oleanna.