Theatre - An ageing actor laments the end of his days on the stage. By Michael Portillo A Life in the Theatre Apollo Theatre, London W1

Don't put your son on the stage, Mrs Worthington. If Noel Coward's song dissuaded the good lady from allowing her daughter to tread the boards, an evening spent watching David Mamet's play might convince her that her boy would be no happier in the theatre.

What makes the going tough for Mamet's anti-hero Robert is not the shortage of money, the slummy digs or the dispiriting periods of "resting", but the crippling doubt about whether, with his advancing years, he is losing his talent. Working closely with John, a young male actor on the way up, further depresses his flagging self-confidence.

At first Robert is able to patronise John. He talks loftily of all the things that experience has taught him (mainly, it seems, to denigrate his fellow performers). John is flattered to receive such confidences and joins in Robert's misogynistic backbiting. The two men become close companions. They perform many scenes together in the theatre's repertory. They share a dressing room (and frequently strip down to their underwear in front of us). But John eventually tires of Robert's monologues. The strain in relations between them increases as the younger man's prospects improve and Robert's shortcomings on stage gradually assume disastrous proportions.

Robert's growing unhappiness is beautifully observed by Mamet. He begins to accuse John of blocking the audience's view of him or upstaging him. "Could you perhaps do less?" There are plenty of laughs and much sadness in his anguished lines. Robert casts around him for people to blame. His tirades against the unions, critics, agents, bloodsuckers and leeches remind us of Mamet's frenetic real-estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek) plays the older man, a role that Mamet invests with complexity. His downward trajectory is not a straight line: there is, for example, a moment when it is the younger man who messes up. Yet even when Robert appears at his most commanding, it is clear that he longs for reassurance. He denigrates his companions because it offers him an excuse for underachieving. Nevertheless, he remains passionate about his art. His philosophising about the theatre may be boring to John, but it reflects an enduring intellectual commitment to his work.

John (played by Joshua Jackson of Dawson's Creek fame) is a less interesting creature. He prefers a book to conversation (at least if it is with Robert). He gets by as an actor without any need to rationalise what he does. He is not even particularly gifted. He gets the breaks for one reason alone: being young.

This imbalance between the personalities presents a problem, this being a play that has only two roles. With his pitiful insecurities and turgid soliloquies, the scrawny-chested Robert is always interesting. Quietly self-assured, and a young god in his Y-fronts, John is insufferably dull.

Stewart handles every nuance of his role wonderfully. He never forgets that while his character is an actor in agony, given to outbursts of anger and self-pity, the play is not, after all, a warning to Mrs Worthington's son. It does not tell us that the theatre is a miserable place to spend your existence; it is a lament about how quickly a life in the theatre passes. Robert is not disillusioned, merely heartbroken that his days on the stage are coming to an end.

With such a compelling performance from Stewart, I wondered whether we should have expected more charisma from Jackson. The trouble is that his role is written to be entirely passive. John does not draw sustenance from ideas. He lacks the imagination to perceive the older man's suffering. Any spark of personality from John would, it seems, run counter to the author's intentions. So the play must hobble along lopsidedly.

Perhaps because of that, the piece struggles to hold our attention, despite Stewart's fine acting and even though Mamet employs every device to stimulate our interest. There are constant changes of scene, with some episodes lasting only a few seconds. The actors are for ever changing costumes, sometimes astonishing us by exiting in one and re-entering just a moment later in another. An understated homoerotic theme runs throughout, evidenced by a pat on the hand, or Robert's jealous inquiry about who John was speaking to on the phone.

We see our actors not just in the dress- ing room but also on stage in a series of scenes that are intended to be hammy, histrionic or boring. It is while Robert is playing a surgeon in a hospital melodrama that he finally falls apart in front of the audience.

I am sure I have seen plays by Mamet that worked better on stage than this one. But I sense that Mamet feels a special love for this creation because he is a man besotted with the theatre. The piece has its flaws, but Mamet has written it with a tenderness and a ruefulness that I found moving.

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