The Real Thing: not quite keeping it real
Tom Stoppard is the master of intellectual acrobatics, and this play was his first attempt to show his emotional side, to describe love; how to find and keep the Real Thing. Although the play *The Real Thing* focuses on love, relationships and fidelity, Stoppard is most passionate when describing his love of writing and his fidelity to words.
*The Real Thing* is the story of Henry (Vincent Gale) who, of course, is a writer and what’s more he is a writer in love. The first scene of the play is actually a scene from one of _his_ plays, performed by his wife Charlotte (Jennifer Clement) and an actor named Max (Simon Bradbury). Clement and Bradbury perform this play within the play as though they were acting; that is, as if it wasn’t real. This misses the point, because the scene –the woman comes home, only to find the man has evidence she’s having an affair – is a recurring motif. If the play within a play is performed broadly, then we just assume Clement and Bradbury are bad actors. It’s a bad choice, and a shame for the actors.
After “the play” we find Henry at home with Charlotte and they are visited by Max and his wife Annie (Jennifer Lines), another actress. With Max and Charlotte out of the room, we learn that Henry and Annie are in love and facing the fact that the joy of their love will come with the price of Charlotte’s and Max’s pain. Henry and Annie move in together, and face the struggle that love is an experience not just of joy and desire, but of maintenance and renovation. Like the heartsick character in Henry’s play discovers, it is a carefully constructed house of cards.
*The Real Thing* was first produced in 1982, and this "Arts Club":http://artsclub.com/production has made renovations to the setting with updated props. In doing so it has lost some fidelity to the text by creating unnecessary distractions. There are lap tops and a big screen TV, while the costumes and other elements seem early 80’s. Rather than another layer worth contemplating in our quest to understand what is real, it feels like a lazy choice at best and, at worst, a built in ad for computers. On a recent episode of a new American television series, there were built in ads for Blue Tooth (“You mean they sent this picture by Blue Tooth?”; “So all the kids were able to get the picture because they all have Blue Tooth!”). When Annie plays a song for Henry on the computer, it felt so unnecessary; it was hard not to think she was demonstrating this wonderful device that comes with may features. Nothing in the text, obviously, refers to these post ’82 items, and the text is where it’s at.
Throughout the play, Henry plays pop music records – that’s right, records – in preparation for his appearance on "Desert Island Discs":http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1787472.stm, the immensely popular British radio show where notable figures share what songs they would take with them to a desert island. Henry’s problem is that he really only likes 60’s pop music and it would be dishonest if he brought classical music just to seem clever. It’s very funny and more than a little heartbreaking when Henry tries to get Annie to hear what he hears, the absolute and pure beauty of a Motown love. For him, it’s as real as it gets.
Vincent Gale and Jennifer Lines are very good and – dare I say – believable as Henry and Annie. When the pair are in the throws of their love, surrounded by boxes as they’ve just moved in, Annie is demonstrative because she is an actress, and Henry laments that the last thing he can write about is love, because it’s, well, real. When things get messy, love is always in the air. Annie dabbles in political activism, supporting a Scottish political prisoner named Brodie. When she was with Max, he was all for her fight for Brodie’s freedom, while Henry thinks the campaign for Brodie is just plain ridiculous.
Annie wants Henry to help fix a play Brodie has written but Henry is appalled; the writing is truly shite. So comes the cricket bat monologue, one of the greatest arguments ever for the fidelity to writing. Vincent Gale does a great job of instilling passion and desperation in arguing that the cricket bat is a carefully constructed device to make a ball fly through the air, and that is what a writer does with language. Brody, and his ilk, however, simply take a lump of wood and expect something to happen; he is “a lout with language”.
While still in love with Henry, Annie falls for Billy, a handsome young actor she’s in a play with. She gets to be the tutor, both in love and acting. Henry is heartbroken, and while struggling to find the words, sticks out the relationship. Charlie Gallant’s Billy is energetic and at times awkward, but in a good way, and it’s understandable that Annie feels power in the relationship, as she is responsible for its beginning and end. Jennifer Lines walks this line beautifully, and it’s no small achievement, as Annie’s complexity lies in her simplicity. Henry is the writer and she reacts to him; it’s not fair to say he has all the best lines, but ultimately it’s through him that Stoppard makes his case.
Henry goes to visit Charlotte to see off his teenaged daughter Debbie (Julie McIsaac), who is about to head out into the world with a knapsack and a pleasantly dodgy sounding boyfriend. Henry discovers when she was at her expensive school supposedly learning Latin, she was actually learning shagging, and while Henry firmly believes that love and sex are important, so is a good grasp of Latin. Language is, after all, his first love.
Henry argues that writers aren’t sacred but words are. Stoppard isn’t sacred, but the direction of this production of The Real Thing feels like it’s trying to prove he isn’t. The play opens with film footage of a spinning record and the play’s credits, and it seems to scream “we’re trying something new here”. The Arts Club production of Allan Bennett’s The History Boys earlier this season was a triumph of multi media elements. This just seemed a bit sad. This is an entertaining enough interpretation of the play, but the annoying visual distractions of computers to update the play are jarring, and distract not just the audience but the actors; they should be allowed to focus on keeping it real.
_The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard; An Arts Club/Belfry Theatre co-production; featuring Vincent Gale, Jennifer Lines, Jennifer Clement, Simon Bradbury, Charlie Gallant, Julie McIsaac; Director Michael Shamata; Designer John Ferguson; Lighting Design Steven Hawkins; Stage Manager Caryn Fehr. It runs until 4 April at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage. For more information get real_ "here":http://www.artsclub.com/plays/20082009/onstage/real-thing.htm