Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
✭✭✭✭✩
by David Mamet, directed by Scott Walker
Unit 102 Actors Company, The Theatre Machine, Toronto
October 15-31, 2015
“Unanchored Lives”
The enterprising Unit 102 Actors Company have done Toronto theatre-goers a favour by presenting David Mamet’s first play Lakeboat. Mamet wrote the play in 1970 when he was only 23, but it was not performed until 1980 after he had won acclaim for other works like American Buffalo (1975) and A Life in the Theatre (1977). Mamet based the play on his own experience of working on a Great Lakes cargo ship for a summer during university. It’s amazing how many of Mamet’s typical themes are already present in Lakeboat along with his ability to capture the actual way people speak. What is especially good about the play is its feeling of freshness and discovery, qualities that have sometimes gone missing in his more recent work.
The first thing you notice when you enter the Theatre Machine is the amazing set designed by Adam Belanger. The one-long play has 28 scenes set in numerous locations off and on the T. Harrison, from the pier entrance to the deck to the wheel house, fireman’s room and the mess inside the ship. Belanger has incredibly created an air of spaciousness on a venue that is anything but spacious. Helping trace the transitions from place to place is Dave Lafontaine’s lighting, so far the more inventive lighting I’ve seen in this theatre.
Despite this comic surface, the play is exactly the opposite of a satire of the working class man. With every scene, with every confidence the workers place in Dale as the new man, we begin to see how they view their own lives as pointless, empty and lonely. Their boat may be in constant motion sailing on the Great Lakes, but the dull routine of working the inland seas contrasts painfully with any notions people might have of the adventure of sailing the high seas.
It dawns on us, as it slowly dawns on Dale, that the failure of the cook to arrive at the ship by departure time is one of the most exciting things that has happened to the crew in a long time. The Pierman (Michael Eisner) tells Dale before he embarks that Guigliani (whose name no one can pronounce correctly) was violently mugged after coming out of a tavern with a prostitute. One motif that helps unify the action is how everyone on board speculates on what happened to Guigliani while magnifying the story with every telling. Far from condemning Guigliani for missing the boat, the crew seems to admire him as someone who has actually had someone interesting happen to him.
Otherwise, the conversations of the crew are mundane in the extreme. The 1st Officer Skippy (Jamie Johnson) and his 2nd Officer Collins (Owen Carrier) seem most interested in what kind of sandwich they’ll have for lunch. One old-timer, Stan (John Healey), is obsessed with convincing everyone that his favourite action movie hero could beat their favourite action movie hero in a theoretical match-up. Stan is also the boat’s self-appointed expert on everything from wine to women whom he calls, in one of Mamet’s most misogynistic phrases, “Soft things with a hole in the middle”. The Fireman (Jesse Ryder Hughes) has the job of keeping his eye on two important gauges all through every trip, yet he is known as a voracious reader. When Dale points out the difficulty of doing both at once, the Fireman becomes extremely defensive since he can’t face the fact that his important job is also excruciatingly boring.
The one man on board Dale could potentially become friends with is Fred (Mark Paci) because he closer to Dale in age and more outgoing. Yet, Fred unwittingly ruins any chance of becoming friends with Dale when he lets Dale in on his secret of how to have sex with women, namely by beating them up first.
Director Scott Walker has assembled a superb cast who inhabit their roles completely. Mamet doesn’t give Dale much to say, but Stephen Macdonald is expert at communicating his thoughts through posture and his facial gestures. Dale repeatedly finds himself in situations where he has to keep listening to a character without revealing to them his real thoughts. Macdonald is adept at conveying his shock, disgust or distress to us while appearing to keep a straight face with his interlocutor.
Anthony Ulc is especially fine in portraying a man like Joe who wants everyone around him to think he is fine, while simultaneously revealing through his preoccupations and body language that everything is not all at fine. Mark Paci and John Healey play the liveliest members of the crew, but both masterfully allow their characters to hang themselves and their pretensions with the rope of words they spin.
Lakeboat is so seldom produced that this production is a must-see for Mamet fans. It is fascinating to see what aspects of drama he develops later and what aspects, like direct address to the audience, he drops. Yet, this show is so well acted and directed it should appeal to anyone who enjoys good theatre. It is enjoyable simply as a humorous slice of life about the people on the cargo boats that still ply the Great Lakes. But it is also much more, and what Mamet reveals to you beneath the humour will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Poster for Lakeboat ©2015 Jason Kibyuk; Stephen Macdonald; Anthony Ulc.
2015-10-17
Lakeboat