Were London Critics Kind to Jackson and Stewart in A Life in the Theatre?

Dawson's Creek star Joshua Jackson is currently making his professional stage debut opposite theater veteran Patrick Stewart in David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre in the West End. The two-hander about the backstage happenings of a regional theater opened at the Apollo Theatre on February 2. Did critics think this revival gave the short piece any life?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: "David Mamet's Life in the Theatre lasts 85 minutes, but, unlike some pieces that are eons longer, it packs three plays into its short, enjoyable span… The acting in Lindsay Posner's production is a bit unequal. Stewart displays the subtle, witty skills he learnt in the great days of the RSC and somehow retained during the long years of Star Trek, and not only when he is in the dressing room or backstage, but when he is supposedly onstage, performing extracts from dumb, dopey melodramas. The trouble is that it is he who is supposed to be in decline and Jackson's John who is on the ladder to success. You could not tell that from the decent but unremarkable performance given by the actor from TV's Dawson's Creek."

Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: "David Mamet's romantic view of the delights and difficulties of the acting business famously found expression in A Life in the Theatre. I was never much persuaded by Mamet's fusion of low comedy and high pathos, or his attempt to explain what he loves about the company of actors. Lindsay Posner's new production leaves me cool… The main trouble, apart from the muted direction, is the casting. The latest actors to put this double-act drama on stage--noted English classical actor Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson, Canadian star of television's teenage soap Dawson's Creek--are about as compatible as roast beef and a knickerbocker glory. Roles that demand close, sinuous, and ambivalent interplay, the subtle stirring of undercurrents of tension, are rendered down to a bland, bored politesse."

Michael Billington of The Guardian: "While David Mamet's 1977 piece is perfectly enjoyable and features two popular actors, I found myself hungering for something that satisfies the appetite rather than merely whets it... The best reason for seeing the piece is to catch Patrick Stewart's Robert. Although the setting is American, he brings an RSC-relish to keywords such as 'sound,' which he rolls lasciviously around his tongue. He subtly implies Robert's homoerotic affection for his young colleague as, at one point, he passionately seizes his left breast. He conveys the joyous melancholy of the actor's life, which provides an abundance of memories, passing with the swiftness of a dream. Joshua Jackson could do more to suggest his young colleague's testy resentment of patronising counsel. But he is precise and funny in the parodic interludes."

Paul Taylor of The Independent: "Patrick Stewart is wonderful now in Lindsay Posner's highly adroit production of David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre… Unfortunately, neither the excellence of the directing, nor the slow-burn drollness of Joshua Jackson's performance can disguise the anorexic dramaturgy that is on offer here. You leave the theatre thinking: where's the show? And the tickets are too expensive to make you feel that this is a some kind of luvvie joke."