Review: All the world's a stage... And one man in his time plays many parts
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 21, 2014
Success fades into oblivion, and failure--if used cleverly to fire your ambition--to eventual success. This story presents Terry Sparkes, a has-been actor whose face no longer adores the billboards. For as long as he can remember, he has felt the need to play a role. Most of all, he pretends to himself these days, thinking himself a celebrity despite that fact that he is no longer in the public eye. "At least he was still working and that, according to Terry Sparkes at least, constituted success.The story is set over the course of a Oscar night, during which Hollywood would give recognition to its finest thespians, and one of the contenders for whom Terry and others across Britain are rooting for is one of the world's greatest actors: Sir Michael. His name is in the limelight, much in opposition to his fan, Terry Sparkes, who has fallen into the shadows of obscurity. It is from there that he hopes to get the vicarious thrill of success. As the ceremony plays on his TV, his mind flashes back to his own past, back in the time he has won a role in the BBC's most popular soap opera. "Everywhere he went he was stopped in the street and asked for his autograph... His star was shining bright." Until, that is, the soap opera was axed, and Terry can barely find work anymore, because of having been typecast by it. Perhaps he should not have accepted that role in the first place, because it reduced him from being a character actor to a one-dimensional `bad-boy'.The author, Duncan Whitehead, invites us to compare the path of the two actors. They are similar in every way, so the only thing that separates them is their luck: "They were both sixty years of age and each had begun acting at roughly the ams time... Both actors were tall men and they each had striking features, coupled with neatly cropped dark hair."As the Oscar ceremony comes to it height, Terry sparkes sustains his attention by snorting some white powder. Will Terry come to realize that his meteoric rise inevitably brought about his fall?  Will he hear Sir Michael's acceptance speech, upon receiving the golden statuette? Will he realize that it includes a tribute to one special man? Will he reflect upon the connection between the rise of one of them and the decline of the other--or is this reflection left, in the end, only to us?Five stars.