• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Mamet, with an accent

October 13, 2010 by ldemanski

I review the Broadway premiere of David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre in the Greater New York section of today’s Wall Street Journal, and the verdict is mostly very positive. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
David Mamet is the most American of playwrights. Not only do his snarlingly competitive characters take a zero-sum view of human relationships, but they express it with words that fly through the air like bullets in search of a body. So what could have possessed Patrick Stewart–make that Sir Patrick Stewart–to wrestle with “A Life in the Theatre,” Mr. Mamet’s 1977 play about a pair of actors, one old and one young, who are battling for dominance over one another? Beats me, but I’m glad it did, for Mr. Stewart’s performance, strange though it may sound from time to time, is in the end both deeply comprehending and painfully touching, just like the play itself.
I can’t think why it took so long for “A Life in the Theatre” to get to Broadway. It’s a natural, a two-character comedy with a wrenchingly serious coda and a plum part for a first-class actor who is capable of convincingly portraying a tired old ham. As usual, Mr. Mamet tells us nothing about his characters beyond the words that they speak, but we are, I think, invited to suppose that Robert (Mr. Stewart) and John (T.R. Knight) are working together in the kind of second-rate repertory company that shoves a new production onto the boards every week or two, ready or not. In many of the 26 scenes, we see Robert and John doing their best to stagger through a series of underrehearsed scripts (one of which is a cruelly clever Eugene O’Neill parody). Elsewhere we look on as Robert tries to make John his protégé, hosing him down with gaseous lectures about the craft of theater…
Mr. Stewart plays Robert very much in the English manner, and at first I feared that his pacing would be unidiomatically deliberate (I smiled to hear him wring five finicky syllables out of the word “specifically”). Then I let go of my preconceptions and started watching the performance he was giving instead of the one I wanted to see, and before long I’d stopped keeping score and was enthralled….
* * *
The print version of the Journal‘s Greater New York section only appears in copies of the paper published in the New York area, but the complete contents of the section are available on line, and you can read my review of A Life in the Theatre by going here.

Filed Under: main

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

October 2010
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Sep   Nov »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in