The Real Thing

I went to see the Soulpepper Theatre Company’s production of The Real Thing this afternoon and I really enjoyed it. The dialogue was witty and intelligent. And the idea of what constitutes love was brilliantly written.

I consider myself a fairly literal person in the sense that when I am presented with a complex/abstract concept, I need time to absorb it before being able to formulate a response. I’m slow that way. So reading is my ideal way to take things in because I can do so at my leisure. When I see something acted out for me, I find that before I’ve had the time to fully understand what’s been said or what’s happened, the characters have moved on and I have to struggle to keep up.

I felt that way while watching the play…there was great dialogue about what love is—one of the universal questions of humankind. One of the proposed definitions is very much like my own: love isn’t loving someone at their best, but loving them when they’re at their worst.

I stopped at a Chapters on my way home in the hopes of picking up a copy of the play to read but there wasn’t one in stock so I’ll just have to buy it online.

There were two things that bothered me though: I’ve always found it a bit distracting when actors who are not British act with British accents because a play is set in Britain. All the actors onstage today were Canadian and some of the accents were better than others so it was a bit hard for me to suspend my belief. The other thing that was a bit odd was to see Megan Follows portray the selfish and sexual Annie when she is forever Anne of Green Gables in my mind.