After 20 odd years in the chorus line of Les Miserables (a gig that commenced the day he was born) Gareth Davies (played, well, very well, by Gareth Davies) has a crisis of identity; his character is nameless, his talent too immense, his creativity stifled. The solution; Charlie Garber (played, well, very well, by Charlie Garber), a character brought to life in Davies' creative HQ, the Dream Forge.
Wonderfully low budget, seemingly haphazard and with a vision that reaches from this small Redfern stage all the way to Kuala Lumpaur, Masterclass pulls Davies – that is, the Davies played by Davies – out of retirement at the bequest of his creation, Garber, to give insight into the power and pitfalls of great acting.
The beauty of Masterclass is that, behind the masterfully straight-faced farce is real emotion. In under an hour these two have managed to cram a lifetime of cliffhangers, of friendships, of epiphanies, and just when it looks as though stakes could not get any higher, they raise again.
There's an old wives tale that reasons that if you're on the verge of tears, tonguing the roof of your mouth will stave them off. While Davies and Garber are ingeniously tongue in cheek, earning every laugh – more often than not at the expense of their own profession – my own tongue reaches not for the cheek, but up for the roof of my mouth between fits of stifled laughter; this is a bizarre but beautiful story of identity and friendship.
