A Coupla White Guys Sitting Around Talking: A Life in the Theatre & Lip Service

A Life in the Theatre written by David Mamet
Lip Service written by Howard Korder
Presented by The Non Prophet Theatre Company

The Non Prophet Theatre Company, still best known for their original sketch comedy show, “The Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine,” is now in their second full season of performing straight plays. Having served on Non Prophet’s board until recently, I have obeyed a self imposed moratorium on reviewing in their shows until now. Full disclosure: Artistic Director Robert Mitchell is still my next door neighbor.

Their current production is two well selected and juxtaposed one acts; “A Life in the Theatre” by David Mamet and “Lip Service” by Howard Korder. Both plays are two-character comedies dealing with mentorship/rivalry between a younger and older man; one set in the theater and the other in television news.

It occurred to me while watching “A Life in the Theatre” that a lot of David Mamet scripts are more paper than ink. All that white space on the page among the commas, ellipses, and cryptic, one word answers can be daunting. Luckily, director B. Weller knows his way around a Mamet play. I scratched my head over Mamet’s “American Buffalo” script for years until I saw Weller’s production of it last season. The key to decoding Mamet’s dialogue is all in the pauses, the inflection and the facial expressions. Weller gets this, and so do his actors, Charlie Barron as John, the young, up and coming actor and Mark Abels as a pompous, condescending veteran.

The story unfolds in a series of backstage conversations as well as scenes from several different plays within the play. Whether dealing with actors, con-men or salesmen, (occupations that more than overlap in the Mamet universe) nobody deals with the minutia of a profession like Mamet. He can even make a conversation about make-up brushes funny and revealing.

“Lip Service” is the more superficial of the two plays, but it was a wise decision to have it run second. While the humor in “A Life in the Theatre” is coiled and restrained, humor in “Lip Service” is fast, loose and funny. You can feel both actors, particularly Barron, enjoying the breathing room once they’ve been untethered from the intricate choreography of Mamet-speak. Here, Abels plays a veteran morning news man who chafes when partnered with a new co-anchor who’s more of an entertainer than a journalist. Barron plays the younger reporter like Ryan Seacrest on crack. Barron’s surface-level take on the surface-level info-tainer might wear out its welcome in a full length play, but his hammy, over-the-top performance is just right for a one act play. Both actors play off each other with ease, ringing the laughs out of the two very different comedies.

A white rear-projection screen that bisects the otherwise all-black stage at the Tin Ceiling proves necessary during the television studio scenes in “Lip Service” but feels superfluous and distracting during “A Life in the Theatre.” Opening night was plagued with some technical problems such as sound glitches and lights that stutter-stepped on and off rather than fading in and out, but these were minor issues.

If you’re game for a four-hour marathon of funny, stick around after “Lip Service” while the Non Prophets get back to their day job, performing their long running sketch show, “The Militant Propaganda Bingo Machine.”

“A Life in the Theatre” & “Lip Service” continue through April 20th at the Tin Ceiling. For more information: www.nptco.org.

David Noble Dandridge can be reached at: radiclwraith-theatre@yahoo.com