Review: HOW NOT TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA at Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 19th November 2021.

All that fine theatre, and this is fine theatre, requires is a story worth hearing and someone to bring it alive. Emily Steele's How Not to Make it in America is a salutary tale from Theatre Republic, pitting one man against the world. That man is James Smith.

'James Smith' is such a neutral, un-theatrical name, and he's taking centre stage in this as he's been significant in such plays as Hibernation. He's something of an Everyman, an ordinary person in extraordinary times. This is a performance to savour.

Matt follows Michelle to New York. She has an internship with an international organization. He has a ninety-day visa and some complimentary remarks from his acting lecturer at drama school. "What you've got is gold dust".

He wants to make it big on the Great White Way but is prepared to start small, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, profit-share, whatever. He overstays his visa, joining the invisible army, working in a video store for cash, and renting couch space in a small and inhospitable apartment.

We meet him as he walks onto the floor of the Space, puts down his bag, produces a tatty pair of cherub's wings, and auditions as Juliet. It sets the desperation and ambition of the young actor almost surreally clear. Through him, as James Smith tells Matt's story, we meet his flatmates, the loud one calls him 'Dundee' because, of course, he's an Aussie, and makes that knife joke over and over, his fellow auditionees, his boss, and co-workers, and the city of New York.

There is one significant other level to the story. It's New York on the day the 21st Century really began, 9/11. Even without that defining event, this would be a story of great significance.

Do the problems of one little person amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world? Smith makes you care. His final desperate speech shows you a delusional young man, homeless and broke in a strange city shocked to its foundations. You want him to succeed, you know he won't. You want him to ask Michelle for his 'plane fare home.

If the role fits him like skin, well, he was an engaging and versatile presence in Euphoria, Emily Steele's two-hander about life in a small country town. There he shared the stage with Ashton Malcolm, now he's on his own. Corey McMahon and he have crafted this anecdotal narrative in a tightly focussed hour. Smith is so compelling that the otherwise impressive contributions from the design team Meg Wilson, Chris Petridis, and Jason Sweeney fade into the background.

Now it's disclaimer time. I'm one of the people who put some money towards this production. I'm pleased we have companies like Theatre Republic, artist-driven and bold, creating work like this.

Photography, Thomas McCammon.

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