Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: Minneapolis/St. Paul

The Guthrie Theater The Real Thing
And a Fringe Festival Recap


Jay Goede and Kathryn Meisle
Tom Stoppard loves to leave his audience a bit unsteady. His plays are often elaborate puzzle boxes, with the true meaning not coming into focus - if at all - until the show's end.

And The Real Thing remains a puzzle throughout - in this case, by being an almost (this is Stoppard we're talking about) straightforward look at infidelity. It is a distinctly chilly British examination of the subject, with a lead character so detached that he scarcely notices the heartbreak that surrounds him. The show receives a too measured reading at the Guthrie's McGuire Proscenium Stage, where the mannered and sometimes leaden direction nearly overwhelms a string of stunning performances from the cast.

The play centers on Henry, an acerbic playwright caught between many realms of culture, sure of his talents and confident in his notions of what makes art, but always with a hint of distrust. Does his love of '50s and '60s pop music mean that his snob credentials aren't up to snuff? More importantly, he is caught between relationship with his wife, Charlotte, and his mistress, an actress named Annie. She is married to Max, and in Henry's current play, he plays Charlotte's husband - who, in a nice Stoppard moment, suspects she is having an affair.

With news of the real-life affair, the relationships change. Henry and Annie eventually marry, while Charlotte moves on, concentrating on raising the pair's daughter. Annie herself begins to wander when she meets a young actor, Billy, who thrills her in the way that the cold Henry never can.

A final twist in the story involves Brodie, a British soldier who was imprisoned after burning a war memorial during an anti-nuclear weapons protest. Annie had met him earlier on the train and feels kinship with the young soldier, adopting him as her cause. This final bit gives Stoppard room to poke at his characters' foibles a bit more, especially their often-empty politics.

It's all good material for satire and parody, but those aspects never get completely off the ground. Some of that has to do with the mannered nature of the story - the characters spend most of the time as "straight men" waiting for punch lines that don't come - and some of it comes from the show's age. I don't think I've thought about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament since around the time the show was written. Toss in plenty of English references that only the most committed anglophile is going to get, and you have a satire that goes through long stretches of not being funny or incisive, two of the hallmarks of the style.

Despite all of this, the cast finds space to excel. Jay Goede takes the complex and cold Henry and gives him as much soul as the script and production will allow. We still don't feel for him by the end of the show, but that has nothing to do with Goede's insightful performance. The excellent Sally Wingert scores again with her bitter, brittle Charlotte, and Kathryn Meisle plays "the other woman" with tons of humanity and humor, showing us what Henry sees in her and lets us understand why it may be difficult for him to keep her. The rest of the cast isn't given much time to develop their characters, though Elizabeth Stahlmann does a fine job with the daughter Debbie in what easily could have been a generic " '80s punk rocker #1" performance.

In the end, I wish director Joe Dowling had sparked more life among the characters. The overall pace feels more leaden than anything else, making an already long show (coming in at nearly three hours) seem all the more longer. While the whole thing is wrapped in a stunning set from John Arnone, the whole production feels like a theatrical set - pretty on the surface, but false when you look behind.

The Real Thing runs through Sept. 24 at the McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis. For information and tickets, call 612-377-2224 or visit www.guthrietheater.org.


Photo: T Charles Erickson


Fringe Festival recap

Sunday marked the end of the 2006 Minnesota Fringe Festival. This year's edition continued the attendance plateau seen in recent years. The 44,814 tickets were a bit ahead of last year (44,626). Organizers are happy with the turnout and continue to expand the event's reach. They'll make a foray into winter scheduling in February when a number of shows (still to be determined) are reprised during a four-day run at the new Guthrie Theater.

Kevin Kling's In Hopes of Claudia opened late during the Fringe and turned out to be an instant success. That's no surprise. Kling's one-man shows have entertained audiences for years who are drawn to his impressive writing skills and strong stage skills.

Kling has long been an important player in the Twin Cities theater community - a role nearly cut short by a horrific motorcycle accident five years ago. After a long recovery process, Kling has been able to return to the stage. But the accident still haunts him, physically (already having limited use of one arm through a disability, Kling completely lost the use of the good arm in the accident), mentally and emotionally. In Hopes of Claudia is not directly about the accident, but the event looms over every moment of the show.

Working with musician and singer Simone Perrin, Kling weaves an adventure in the underworld. He takes his time getting there, with stops along the way to describe his own near-death experience, sharing folk tales via the dijareedoo and presenting an original children's story, "Curious George Goes to Hell." When he does finally get to the underworld, it is almost anticlimactic - Kling meets up with Abraham, has a talk, and then heads back to our world. It's a case where you wish Kling would have had more time than the Fringe's 60 minutes to weave his story. Still, the show is as much about the journey as the destination, and Kling is still a wonderful guide.


- Ed Huyck

Be sure to check the current schedule for theatre in the Twin Cities area