Screen Writer

Revolving actors are the future, writes Peter Crawley

Some of David Mamet's best lines have never actually made it into his plays. Take his remark about location shooting in freezing conditions: "It was so cold even the witches' tits were phoning in sick." Or his fatherly repartee with his young daughter when she scolded him for using bad language: "That language put that fuckin' Fudgsicle in your mouth."

Now we have a brand new zinger. When the Entourageactor Jeremy Piven recently cried off early from Mamet's Speed-the-Plowon Broadway, citing mercury poisoning from an overload of sushi, Mamet's response radiated his customary sensitivity: "My understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer."

This incident saw a few temperatures rise, among them the show's producers, who sensed something fishy and filed a complaint against Piven with Actors Equity. But the solution to the problem (replacing Piven with two successive actors) has been uniquely successful. This strategy - let's call it the Sushi Switch - could be rolled further.

In the New York production, Piven's role (mendacious film producer Bobby Gould) was taken up first by Norbert Leo Butz, a Broadway regular, and then William H. Macy, a bona fide, character-actor legend and graduate of the Mamet School of Muttering Photorealism.

The New York Timesreviewed the show again and assessed all three Bobbies: sly and vulpine Piven, boyish and rowdy Butz, and weary, weathered Macy. It read as though the actors had been tag-teamed in and out of the same performance.

So, how about it? It took some iffy sashimi to bring theatre within striking distance of a device that Todds Solondz and Haynes have have dabbled with in cinema. Why not strike before the iron freezes and watch a character being passed from actor to actor like a baton in a relay race?

This solves two problems. Now every audience member can pretend to be one of those theatre bores with long, unforgiving memories. But rather than waxing lyrical about some phantom memory of Donal McCann in Faith Healer, you can become soggy with nostalgia over the Lear you saw 15 minutes ago.

The second benefit is job creation. For every actor who ever said, "That could be me up there," you're on in five.

Possibly there are certain flaws in the Nigiri Changeover. But Google Derren Brown's Person Swap and you'll see that people are utterly unfazed when the person they're having a conversation with suddenly shifts shape, gender or colour.

Besides, an attenuated version of the Norimaki Swap (all of these terms are copyrighted, by the way) is already in place. A couple of weeks ago the adventurous Dublin company Brokentalkers staged In Real Timewith a nightly succession of guest stars, each taking their instructions via headphones.

The idea is bound to meet resistance (one man's Fugu is another man's poison), and I know the curtain calls will get crowded, but this could be the start of a revolution in theatre: a Mercury Rising C.

pcrawley@irishtimes.com