Even better than the real thing

Is there anyone out there who remembers Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders? Particularly their song Mm Mm Mm Mm Mm Mm Mm? Well, world renowned playwright Tom Stoppard does because that song, along with many other early 60’s pop classics are central to the leading character in the play The Real Thing, which has proven to be so successful at Dublin’s Andrew’s Lane that it’s run has been extended until early June.

The director of the production is actor-writer-director, Paul Meade, who recently won a Stewart Parker Award for his own play Skin Deep, and as an inveterate Elvis fan I have to ask him if Stoppard is really serious having the lead character in his play say Elvis never recorded anything of worth after All Shook Up! Get a life, Tom!
“He does say that” Paul responds, laughing at the question. “But Stoppard, during a recent radio interview, said he had a flippant side and maybe comes out in his love of those pop songs. And, in the play, such songs are almost used as a Buddhist mantra, to take you out of yourself a little bit. But the songs also are love songs and if this play is about one thing it is love, though it has that really interesting musical theme going through it as well. But what attracted me to it was the exploration of love.”
Why wouldn’t it? The main characters in The Real Thing are actors and the play is set in the world of theatre, and at last one famous actor I know – who saw the same performance I did – walked out of Andrew’s Lane so shaken by the play’s depiction of the thespian milieu, he looked like he’d had his face slapped for two hours!
“The play has a broader appeal that that, obviously, but yeah, it does seem to have that effect on actors in particular,” Paul responds. “I am an actor and a writer and I really recognise traits and tendencies in so many scenes of this play. Henry, the writer at the heart of it all and the person who seems most on top of things, and the wittiest character, never actually leaves his house throughout the play, in fact he’s almost agoraphobic. There is that desperate clinging on to his partner, particularly towards the end of the play and I found that very moving. The play certainly makes you re-evaluate relationships you’ve had, or are having, or may have in the future, that’s what I think most people take from the play. It’s really universal. As in even examining the place of sex in love, raising the question of what it means to have an exclusive, monogamous relationship and what’s valuable about that, or isn’t.”
What does Paul think is Stoppard’s answer to that particular question?
“That it is valuable” he says categorically. “But what many commentators haven’t picked up on is that every argument Tom Stoppard makes in the play he undercuts in some other way. He’s maybe too clever for his own good, in that sense. So you can’t take anything in the play on face value, you have to look at it in the context of everything else that is going on, what other arguments are being delivered by other characters.”
And did Paul tell Morna and Iseult and other actors in the play, that The Real Thing, like any Stoppard play, is essentially a hall of mirrors?
“Yeah” he says. “And you could say that other characters are there, in ways to give the leading character stronger arguments. But all of these tensions are have made working on The Real Thing, as a director, so exciting for me. Largely because I really do, as you say, recognise this whole landscape so well!”

The Real Thing runs at Andrews Lane until June 2nd