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Paul Shearman wrote and performs what is surely one of the most profound shows at this year’s New York City Fringe. The Last Audition works on several levels.
Riffing on Shakespeare is one, and it’s always a risky business to juxtapose your own writing with the Bard’s incomparable dramatic poetry.
The play is also a concise tour de force meta-monologue reflecting on the craft and meaning of theater itself, delivered by an actor as generous of heart as he is deeply skillful.
Fundamentally and most powerfully, The Last Audition is a study in early-stage dementia.
Shearman is Sebastian Drake, an aging Shakespearean actor of note, arriving early to an audition for the title role in King Lear. Out of the limelight for some time, he feels he has matured to the point where Lear can and should be his final role. Despite a sore back, he’s in full command of his instrument, able to seize attention with his voice and even without speaking.
We stand in for an audience in his imagination, to whom he soliloquizes at length as he warms up. Director David St John has worked with Shearman to push and pull the monologue’s pace and energy to create an affecting and mostly naturalistic performance.
Intermittently he receives calls and voicemails from his daughter, who is preparing to take him for a visit to an assisted living home. Because Sebastian is slipping. Plaguing him are unmatched socks, misplaced props, and recitations of speeches from Lear cut short with forgetting.
Memory, he remarks, is “a shy animal” – if you stay very still, it will emerge. Except when it doesn’t.
Dementia is surely one of the most tragic “flaws” than can afflict us. That makes The Last Audition a true tragedy. My only quibble is with the twist ending, which, unless I missed a subtlety in the script (very possible), surprises not because of unlikelihood but because it seems to contradict the presence of a voiceover character.
The Last Audition debuted at the Adelaide Fringe. It has two more performances in NYC, on April 15 and 17, before traveling on to the Fringe Festivals in Montréal and Edinburgh. If you’re Fringing in any of those cities, or just want to see a glowing performance bathed in pathos of the best kind, don’t miss it.
Visit New York City Fringe online for a full schedule.
