Theatre Review: Me and Robert McKee, Circa 2

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Greg McGee’s Foreskin’s Lament is on an NZQA list of NCEA set plays alongside the likes of Twelfth Night, The Birthday Party, and The Cherry Orchard and has been taught in schools for most of the thirty years since it first appeared.

In recent years McGee has written TV scripts rather than plays. No doubt the money is surer and selling words is a strong theme in his newest play.

In a 2008 interview Scoop’s David Geary asked McGee whether he had ever thought of writing a how to be a professional scriptwriter guidebook? McGee answered that he had already given away all his secrets. Some of those secrets are given an airing in his new play Me and Robert McKee at Circa 2. Or, are the secrets Billy Dolan reveals those of the real Robert McKee, scriptwriting guru from California, whose seminar McGee once attended. The main character flings McKee’s book off the stage early in the play. Has McGee had second thoughts about the wisdom of McKee?

Later in that same Scoop interview McGee says, “After so many years of scripts, I particularly enjoyed prose – having a one-on-one relationship with the reader, without all those pesky intermediaries like actors, directors and producers and network executives. If the publisher shows any enthusiasm, I’ll get to finish the next bit, Telling Lies For Money.”

The pesky intermediaries in the Circa production do a good job. Perhaps McGee’s worry about the status of the pen and the sword, now that keyboards have replaced the pen, inspires him to allow main character Billy to put us all under attack, “Those who can do, those who can’t review,” hit its mark. And McGee, through Billy, has quite a lot to say about telling lies for money.

Billy is a scriptwriter reduced to teaching, he is in the throes of a midlife crisis. His friend Mac the banker, doublethinker, tryhard producer is in the throes of his own midlife crisis. Their collaboration is an attempt to get funding from doctors whose newfound investment power is payoff from treating the victims of other midlife crises. But the play isn’t about the ubiquitous midlife crisis; it is about the struggles of the writer for whom the doom-laden threat of the blank page looms.

Christopher Brougham as Billy exudes style and relaxed good humour. It is tempting to sit back in the audience and learn from this entertaining teacher. He fixes his class with the attentive skimming gaze of the skilled lecturer and lighting alerts us when it’s lecture time. As writer Billy is less confident, he drinks to compensate, he doubts, he worries. Billy the teacher knows that his scripted words have to live, McGee’s do, Billy did a good job with his creator.

Paul McLaughlan is Mac the banker, would-be producer of Billy’s film. The two of them have been friends from childhood and are coming to a parting of the ways. They understand different things about money and about words.

It is a fast moving play with action and wit and lots happens in an hour and a quarter. There is some tricky business with a pistol, there are laugh-aloud moments, there is a tight structure and gripping story teacher Billy would be proud of.

The Hollywood-style music is sophisticated as befits the big time Mac and Billy are aiming for and it is sentimental too as befits the small time they cannot escape.

Me and Robert McKee probably wont make it onto the NZQA lists but that is no bad thing. Take the opportunity to see the world premier at Circa

For more information and to book tickets http://circa.co.nz/Shows/Me-and-Robert-McKee

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