Remy
Bumppo's
production of "The Real Thing", directed by James Bohnen takes us into 1982 London and
intertwined artistic lives considering the importance of words and art and love
and each other. As with many Stoppard plays, your first instinct is to map the action as time
goes on. Before you give yourself over to "Stoppard time" and the
Stoppard way of story telling, you ask yourself: does this scene follow the
previous scene precisely, sequentially? And the fact that our main character,
we soon learn, is a playwright opens up additional possibilities for each
scenes as it begins: is it "real" or is this a scene being played by
our characters as actors in several plays within our play? Soon we no longer
overanalyze in the moment, the ride takes over, and with this play and this
production, that ride is well worth your time. At one point a character
comments on this layered reality in which all theatre artists live:
"That's the different between plays and real life - thinking time."
Love that. And you'll love this production.
Sound
design by Victoria DeIorio is delightful as always, either exquisitely executing
the specific requirements as laid out by Stoppard, or designing beautifully to
augment and illustrate words and action that are tightly intertwined with
textual musical allusions. I have just returned from London where I saw
Stoppard's "Rock and Roll" in its current inaugural West End, in which he
uses different popular music from the same time period in an entirely different
repressed political context: music and expressing the desire for freedom of an
entire generation and a culture, in the 1960s in Eastern Europe and several
decades later. In this current stunning revival of Stoppard's 1982 play, music
has a gentler yet entirely as insistent role to play: as memory, and character
expression of innermost feelings, as a call to a gentler time for the main
character. As a character itself. Properties designer Ross Moreno has stocked the stage and the
hands of the characters with just the right albums in their cardboard sleeves,
providing that little rush of familiarity to those in the audience who
recognize the cover art as I did, who also loved this music from another time,
in this form: "Don't know much about history ... " we'd sing, and bop
to "You Better Shop Around". This music from the 1960s (and earlier?)
sets the tone for this 1982 play. We immediately ask: will retro tastes of our
main character be part of the story? Will one or more of the characters be
frozen in a prior era?
Henry
(Nick Sandys),
our playwright, is the music fan and a self-styled pundit. Charlotte Anne
Fogarty, his
solid and long suffering wife early in the play and a frequent (we guess)
actress in Henry's plays says of him that "he thinks that he has a sense
of humor - what he has is a joke reflex." Max (Sean Fortunato), actor and husband of another
actress Annie (Linda Gillum) we soon meet, comments on reality in a surprisingly
concise way "That's what life's about - messy bits of good and bad
luck". Right! And events and emotions mix these characters lightly as the
Act proceeds, providing us several considerations over what, and who, is the
"real thing".
Act
2 provides some resolutions and many additional questions. We have been
introduced to a young man Brodie (Keith Gallagher) with a political ax to grind,
who Annie believes has a play worth something, and that Henry ought to assist
in this playwright task. As a sub theme, "what is art" emerges here.
Annie makes the case to Henry, who bemoans the lack of fluency in Brodie's
writing, that Brodie needs to get his message out there. "He's not writing
to compete" she says, "he's writing to be heard." For Henry, the
message coalesces around this: there is a difference and there is a need to
protect art. Henry provides a beautiful piece of stage business and language as
he describes the artistry of great writing, involving a cricket bat. This scene
alone would be worth the price of admission to this production. Henry notes
about Brodie that "he's a lout with language" and that "I don't
think writers are sacred, but words are." Yes.
Stoppard's
choice to have his characters be actors and playwrights allows for other
allusions that can be analyzed or simply allowed to fade away. Plays that
characters are reading or studying throughout the action of our
"real" story include "Miss Julie" and "Tis A Pity
She's A Whore". This is a play about considering the real thing -- the
real performance, what's really important, what's illusion and what is worth
fighting for. And yes, what is sacred. To Henry, words themselves are sacred,
and its hard to disagree. In a late scene between Henry the playwright and his
young adult daughter Debbie, he outlines a final "real thing" about
love: its about "knowing and being known".
Efficient
modular stage design by Tim Morrison provides multiple playing spaces, and "play within
a play" locations that are both upstage and down stage (and "up"
and "down", that may or may not have thematic resonance). Stage
dressing by Ross Moreno is modernist, in the line of today's low priced Swedish
superstores, but in the 1982 of this play, furnishings in this style would have
been the height of modernist design, not quite yet for the masses, and would
have been seen as very cool and not as ubiquitously available.
A
lovely production, with lovely performances, that will resonate for days.