A Life In the Theatre

Telling moments grow full 'Life' cycle'
By: Ann Marie Welsh

'A Life in the Theatre' is David Mamet's love letter to actors. Director David Ellenstein's warm and funny production at North Coast Repertory makes that love palpable, transforming Mamet's minimalist 1977 play about playing into a vivid example of how - when every element clicks - actors re-create life's abundance in the theater.

Old Globe veteran Jonathan McMurtry plays the older actor Robert; he's paired with Francis Gercke as the younger artist John. They share a series of "backstage" moments as well as "onstage" scenes in which Mamet deftly parodies a range of plays.

At NCRT, designer Marty Burnett hit upon a wonderful solution to visualizing the play's behind-the-scenes perspective. He's rigged a red curtain upstage. When it opens, a virtual audience sits watching John and Robert's onstage scenes, for the actors' backs are to us. But behind the curtain is a wide mirror, tilted at such an angle that patrons also comprise that virtual audience; we can watch our reflections watching John and Robert in the play-within-the-play scenes.

Ellenstein, McMurtry and Gercke pump up the comedy, though never so crudely that they warp the play's gathering momentum. We get a peek at how these actors deal with little disasters - a broken zipper, a prop window that won't shut, a lighter that's out of fluid. McMurtry's comic timing is nuanced and impeccable; he brings out the most engaging qualities in Gercke's coiled-spring energy and enormous charm.
Their repertory of looks, grimaces, and gestures are often screamingly funny - never more so than in a faux play in which McMurtry's Robert plays a snooty lawyer and Gercke's John a friend who's come to confront him. Their clipped accents and upper-crust manners never falter, despite Gercke's character stealing focus, McMurtry's character posturing (though a big safety pin holds his pants together), and a faulty lighter that makes their attempts to smoke cigars ridiculous.

Mamet's backstage dialogue is characteristically elliptical, though less salty than usual. He structured the piece as a steady accumulation of small details. In their dressing room, Robert and John seem to be talking about nothing in particular, almost in code: pass the cold cream, thanks for the tissue.
Then Robert misses a cue, forgets a line, and reveals a bit of loneliness and need. John, at first open to the older man's mentoring, grows less patient with his foibles, less reverent in his listening.

Months, perhaps even years pass. As John gains confidence and external polish, he blooms toward artistic maturity, while Robert, the master who lives for his art, begins a slow fade. Toward the end, the sound of McMurtry's offstage voice sobbing becomes the emotional high point of the action; he's been discovered lurking in the wings watching John rehearse as Chorus from Shakespeare's "Henry V."
Robert is simply incapable of leaving the theater, so passionate is he about the stage - and so uncertain about what awaits him outside.

One of the dearest elements in Ellenstein's staging comes in the work of three actors in silent roles. Ellenstein cast San Diego actors Fabiola Francesca, Sylvia Enrique, and Pat Moran as two dressers and the stage manager, respectively. They add immeasurably to the real-life feel. They help speed and smooth the pace of the play. I imagine them night after night, serving this production, absorbing through every pore the lessons that Robert and John, McMurtry and Gercke so generously share.
 

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Well-cast, funny 'Life in the Theatre' a pleasing study of the acting life
By: PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer

It's hard to tell where fact stops and fiction begins in North Coast Repertory Theatre's highly entertaining production of "A Life in the Theatre," starring two of San Diego's best-known actors.

Jonathan McMurtry (a Vista actor who has graced the Old Globe stage for four decades) and Francis Gercke (a young Carlsbad actor who exploded onto the San Diego theater scene three years ago) star in David Mamet's comedy/drama about two actors ----- one on his way down, the other on his way up ---- in a contest of wills, egos and acting talent that's both poignant and hilarious.

Fluidly directed with an eye for silent detail by North Coast Rep artistic director David Ellenstein, this 90-minute play is a treasure chest of backstage insider jokes that illuminate the fractious relationship between the play's two central characters ---- Robert, the eccentric and egotistical senior member of a repertory theater company, and the company's newest player, the young, eager-to-please John.

When they meet, John is in awe of Robert and he hungrily collects the older actor's frequently offered pearls of theatrical wisdom (which Robert, who is gay, apparently mistakes for romantic interest). But Robert's quirks, pettiness and self-absorption quickly erode the pedestal John has built for him. As John's talent and confidence grow, he becomes the able peacock strutting his stuff onstage while the jealous (and lovesick?) Robert watches crestfallen from the sidelines.

While Robert's slow, sad decline is heartbreaking, there's ample levity in the funny business that occurs when these two actors step onstage for their unseen audience ---- egregiously bad acting, upstaging, missed cues, forgotten lines, windows that won't close, a prop lighter that won't light, a phone that won't ring, barbecue forks doubling as surgical retractors and a corpse with an uncontrollable case of the giggles.

The play is scripted as an intermissionless series of short vignettes that highlight the gradual disintegration of the actors' relationship and the steady reversal of their fortunes. The transformation is subtle and the actors' motivations aren't so much mean-spirited as self-preservation-oriented.
Ellenstein's casting is brilliant. The actors so perfectly inhabit their roles (and their place in local theater so mirrors their characters) that their post-curtain hug is almost a necessity to convince the audience that their onstage animosity is only make-believe.

The role of Robert seems tailor-made for McMurtry, who first played the part in a Gaslamp Theatre production of the play (also directed by Ellenstein) a dozen years ago. San Diego theatergoers have aged right along with McMurtry, and his entertainingly familiar grunts, cackles, whines and oddball phrasing are showcased to exceptional effect in the character of Robert. With his doleful, dewy eyes and his whispered chant "ephemerous, ephemerous," McMurtry authentically portrays a man who can only play silent witness as his star is eclipsed.

While McMurtry has said playing Robert feels autobigraphical, Gercke takes a big leap as the young actor, John. Gercke's forte is playing tightly coiled, intense and troubled men. John is none of these. He's serious about his craft but also loose, impulsive, carefree, likable and (unlike Robert) interested in a life beyond the stage.

Gercke's performance is hugely funny ---- from his atrocious accents to his frantic reactions to onstage mishaps. And in one impressive scene on a lifeboat, the audience watches John transform from over-the-top ham to a true actor who lives in the moment.

Sylvia Enrique, Fabiola Francesca and Pat Moran have nonspeaking roles as the backstage dressers and a stage manager. Marty Burnett designed the backstage dressing room set, Mike Durst created the lighting, and Jeanne Reith created the costumes. George Ye created sound, Bonnie Durben managed props, and Aaron Rumley is (the real) stage manager.

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'A Peek Behind the Curtain'
By: PAT LAUNER

For theater insiders, there are plenty of in-jokes in David Mamet's "A Life in the Theatre," currently getting an outstanding production at North Coast Repertory Theatre. There's the actor rivalry, the backbiting, the petty squabbles, the pontificating voice of experience, the mentee who no longer needs mentoring and a raft of onstage gaffes and disasters: broken zippers, missing props, lost lines and general havoc. It's enough to cause actors in the audience to double over in gleeful recognition. But there are some extra 'insider' delights if you know the principals.

First, there's the back-story that, a dozen years ago, NCRT's artistic director David Ellenstein (left) played the role of the younger actor to Jonathan McMurtry's (right) older man. Wisely, he's cast McMurtry again, since the role was just about tailor-made for him. (After the opening, McMurtry confided that, 12 years later, he feels a lot closer to what's going on onstage). And if you know McMurtry and his youthful counterpart Fran Gercke, the talented artistic director of New Village Arts Theatre, there are a few additional treats in the text which, ironically, nail each of them and their habits as performers. At one point, McMurtry, as the elder statesman of actors, decries "The mugging! The stilted diction!" -- some have said that of him. And he chides Gercke's character, the young-buck actor, saying, "Could you perhaps do less?" which could apply to Gercke's sometimes fussily hyperactive performances. But not this one.

Under Ellenstein's richly layered, pitch-perfect direction, both actors are in top form (Gercke -left- even gets to show his buff agility, doing some 50 pushups and finessing a boxer-like cross-hand jumprope routine).
The two play off each other masterfully, and they mine all the humor inherent in the piece. Each character takes a journey: one star is rising, the other falling. Frequently, with this play, the older actor's performance is overstated, overexaggerated and over the top. McMurtry brings a great deal of nuance to the character, who continues to pronounce and pontificate though his heart is clearly aching with the acknowledgment of his age, and his envy of the younger man's youth, energy, friends and even his tools of the trade. Whereas the younger actor's role is often played as just a cipher who merely reacts to the histrionics of the older man, Gercke's performance, modulated and restrained, creates a living, breathing man who morphs, thanks to diligent practice and good reviews, from a groveling, self-effacing, awe-struck acolyte into a confident player who realizes that he is exceeding his 'mentor' and no longer needs his help.

Jeanne Reith's marvelous quick-change costumes are manipulated by two silent -- but still very present -- onstage dressers (Sylvia Enrique and Fabiola Francesca), whose work is complemented by a visible Stage Manager (Pat Moran) executing several theatrical acts -- light checks, prop movement, etc. -- that provide extra time for those multitudinous costume changes. All three do very nice work.

The actors are obviously sharing a dressing room in a repertory company, so we get to see them perform in a wide variety of scenes and styles that are often quite hilarious. Marty Burnett's set does a lovely job of creating the requisite makeup mirror, the footlights, scrim and audience upstage, and the clear sense of a backstage and a performing space. Mike Durst's subtle lighting brings it all to life, with expressive backgrounding by George Ye's sound design, though that cello does tend to wear out its welcome after a time. In truth, so does Mamet's conceit. He makes his points early on and somewhere around the one-hour mark in this 90-minute one-act, the piece begins to feel repetitive. But Ellenstein and his crackerjack cast have an excellent sense of timing, and once the half-way point is reached, the piece moves spryly to its inexorable conclusion.

Overall, the production is a delight in all ways for the stories it tells, the tips it gives, the honest peek behind the curtains it represents. Theater-folk will recognize the behaviors, the onstage disasters and the personality quirks depicted. And non-theater people will relish the insider's view they're privy to. This one is a must-see for all.

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