Words Take Center Stage in The Real Thing

Even without any foreknowledge of the plot of The Real Thing, we’re tipped off as soon as we walk into the space that Tom Stoppard’s tale will examine lives both onstage and off. Patrick Lynch’s set design incorporates a simple and obvious stroke of symbolism by blending raw, bare scenery into the surroundings, revealing the inner structure of the flats and platforms. Characters walk in and out of these unfinished areas, reminding us to question both the art and artifice of everything we see and hear. This is, of course, Stoppard’s habitual realm and The Real Thing abounds in linguistic acrobatics, not-so-romantic intrigues, a healthy dose of rock music (on vinyl, naturally), and treatises on the nature of love tempered with a dollop of global politics. If it sounds like The Gamm’s rendition of Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll from a couple of years ago (complete with obligatory Pink Floyd references), then it should. This is familiar ground for both Stoppard and Tony Estrella’s Gamm Theatre. A brilliant script by a master wordsmith delivered by a cast and production team at the top of their game. What more could we ask for? Not much, it seems.

Estrella’s Stoppard-esque doppelganger is a playwright floundering to make sense of love and monogamy in a world that, for him, abounds in wordplay and 60s AM radio classics. Real longing and passion is better expressed by the Righteous Brothers than Maria Callas. (“That woman would have a job getting into the Top Thirty if she were hyped.”) Estrella, bouncing off of his extraordinary turn in The Gamm’s Anne Boleyn, even resurrects his saucy Scottish brogue to season his often manic John Cleese-like playwright, Henry. The romantic intrigues that entangle Henry, his friends, and his soon-to-be ex-wife all revolve around words. While his friend Max, an actor (delivered with charming understatement by Tom Gleadow), appears to be the second coming of Oscar Wilde when delivering Henry’s script onstage, he is somewhat ungifted in the language area when offstage. Henry writes love as a verbal sparring, but he also cannot muster the same brilliance in his own life.

Without revealing the adulterous plot twists, suffice it say that our notions of love and marriage are torn apart and examined repeatedly. While Henry would seem to be the worldly artiste, his notions of love and fidelity are actually rather parsimonious and the women in his life float notions of free love that to Henry seem to reek of misogynistic polygamy. What Henry interprets as a life of “dignified cuckoldry” is a declaration of freedom for his daughter, Debbie, who declares that monogamy is nothing more than “colonization.” Faced with a growing suspicion that he is less patrician than he wants to be, Henry is forced to defend and re-examine all of his notions about art/love vs. commerce/sex.

Annie (a perfectly cast Jeanine Kane) and Charlotte (a forceful and fetching Marianna Bassham) tag team Henry’s sensibilities over the course of the years the play inhabits and try to temper his literary snobbery all while attempting to bolster his societal and political awareness. It sounds dry when explained, but watching actors work their craft this skillfully with such delicious dialogue is satisfying in and of itself. And, while at times, the script tends to come across as too self-indulgent, it hits the mark far more often than it misses. In the end, Henry’s notion of love as a perfect three-minute pop song seems refreshing rather than naïve, and he ultimately saves himself (and Stoppard) with the declaration, “I’m not saying writers are sacred, but words are.”