THEATRE REVIEW:
THE REAL WORLD?

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
03 MAY 2012
R: 3.5/5


Pictured: Matthew Edison, Jane Spidell

Long before writers like James Frey and Mike Daisey led us to examine the often tenuous relationship between authorship and the truth, the subject was pretty incisively dissected and explored by Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay in a play titled THE REAL WORLD?. Now, 25 years after it made its English language première at the Tarragon Theatre in a translation by Bill Glassco and John Van Burek, THE REAL WORLD? returns to the Tarragon in a production that allows a whole new audience to get a look at the play — considered by many to be amongst Tremblay’s best work.

Directed by Tarragon’s artistic director Richard Rose, this new production features an all-star cast, albeit one drawn from admittedly different constellations, combining the artistry of respected stage artists like Tony Nappo, Jane Spidell and Matthew Edison with one-time Oscar nominee, Meg Tilly, essaying what proves to be a pretty graceful leap from screen to stage.

Set in a suburban Montreal home in the ’60s (created by designer Charlotte Dean), THE REAL WORLD? begins as a confrontation between a care-worn mother (Spidell) and her grown son, Claude, a playwright (a tentative Edison). Seems Claude has written a play that lays bare some innermost family secrets, documenting not only a troubled relationship between his mother and his travelling salesman father (played by Nappo), but the equally dodgy one between his father and his sister, played by Sophie Goulet.

While his mother doesn’t dispute the cold hard facts as laid out in Claude’s play, she has serious issues with the attitudes he portrays, at the same time as she clearly resents the colossal invasion of privacy, her own and her family’s. As mother and son debate the fictional treatment of the family and, in the process, dissect his own troubled relationship with his father, the characters with which Claude has populated his play take centre stage, sharing the world with his real-life family and playing out his version of the family’s story, achieving a resolution that real life seems to have withheld.

In this alternate world, Claude’s father, Alex, is essayed by Cliff Saunders, while Spidell’s earthy and heart-breaking mother is echoed by Tilly, both adding a staginess that contrasts beautifully with Nappo’s and Spidell’s more centred performances. Cara Gee plays Claude’s troubled sister Mariette in this alternate world.

It’s a thought-provoking, sometimes touching, piece of theatre, in which the writer’s imperative is thoroughly examined within the context not just of truth, but of emotional honesty as well, while issues of privacy hang in the balance — a drama finally about family drama.  But it is also problematic in that, with two realities sharing time and space, it offers a minefield for its director —  a host of problems which frankly are not all sorted out in this too often turgid staging.

And finally, in a rather showy reminder that this is not merely a play within a play, but in fact, a play within a play within a play, Rose successfully drop kicks his audience out of the world of any of those plays and leaves us sitting in the theatre waiting for all those plays to end.