Review: Northlight's 'A Life' a showcase for John Mahoney

John Mahoney and Matt Schwader. Below: Schwader and  Robet Belushi. 

Cogito ergo sum,” intones the dying Desmond Drumm as he bitterly reflects on his life, “I am a cog, therefore I am.” The life’s accounting at the core of A Life comes as Drumm – a government bureaucrat who spent “300 days a year, for 30 years at a job I hate” - attempts to reconcile his time on earth as he faces the end of it.

The irony in Hugh Leonard’s slow-building drama is harsh: “I need to know what I amount to,” Drumm (John Mahoney) pleads in a rare, outward flash of raw, desperate neediness. But as he continues - “I seem to have access to everyone’s file but my own” – it is with the hardened, caustic edge of a man who has been so angry for so long he’s almost extinguished all other emotions.

Set in the tiny hamlet of Dalkey, Ireland in 1937 and 1977, A Life begins with Drumm as a cipher as intelligent as he is hostile. He seems utterly mismatched with his chatty, endlessly cheerful and less-than whipsmart wife Dolly (the invaluable Penny Slusher). For reasons unclear, he has shunned his only friends for the better part of a decade, and is attempting to reconnect solely because (this is no spoiler as it is revealed in the first scene) he has six months to live.

The questions at the deceptively cold heart of A Life revolves around what causes a life to add up to such joyless emptiness. Drumm has replaced his friends with standards, existing in the cold cave of his intellect instead of living within the warm arms of family and friends. It’s an understated tour de force for Mahoney , the Oak Parker famous for his years on Frasier – a thoroughly entertaining sitcom didn’t begin to hint at the depths he can mine.

Despite the explosive reveal in the penultimate scene of A Life, director BJ Jones doesn’t exploit the emotional heft of Leonard’s story, wisely keeping the work as controlled as its anti-hero’s words even as the emotional stakes grow ever higher and Drumm faces demons for decades buried. Forcing long-unspoken truths into the open is Mary (Linda Kimbrough), whose relationship with Drumm is murky at first but takes on a crystalline, riveting clarity as the second act moves towards its climax. This is Kimbrough’s play as much as Mahoney’s, and she turns in a performance of fierce intensity. When Mary glares at Drumm across her living room, it’s with the fearsome, uncompromising focus of a laser. Let Drumm hurl his sharpest invectives. Mary is a woman of equally fearsome ammunitions, and she is not afraid to use them -no matter who gets wounded.

This is definitely Mahoney and Kimbrough’s show, but the ensemble is powerful throughout. Bradley Armacost finds the unspoken sadness in Kearns, a jovially hapless drunk obliviously spending his life in the service of the 11th commandment (“Thou Shalt Not Make Others Look Inferior”).

 As the Young Desmond Drumm, Matt Schwader is tangled roil of frustration, ambition, and – following one fateful night – soul-crushing dashed hopes of both the heart and the mind. Then there’s Melanie Keller as young Mary.

 “It’s only a chair,” she says of a Van Gough print Desmond has presented her with, “A bit of wood.” And then: “But it’s like he got all of himself inside of it.” In one line, we see the depths of insight Mary’s capable of, and realize that she could be the woman to engage Drumm’s demanding mind and ease his restless heart.

That of course, doesn’t happen. But why it doesn’t, and the far-reaching consequences of pride and anger wielded as a lifetime’s defense against hurt, make this Life compelling.