KEY POINTS:
ON STAGE
What: The Real Thing
Where and when: Silo Theatre, Aug 31-Sep 29
What will we do for love? Just ask actors Stephen Lovatt and Theresa Healey.
Lovatt is proud as punch that a short film his partner Kirsten Green directed is in competition at the Montreal Film Festival.
Fish'n'Chip Shop, an urban romance about a young girl who dreams of escaping the family fish and chip shop, is based on a short story by Christchurch writer Carl Nixon.
"Kirsten is a camerawoman but she wants to get into directing so we decided to be pro-active and make a short film," Lovatt says. "She knows all the technical stuff and I think that shows in the way the film looks. It's great."
Healey gets to do theatre work only once or twice a year now that she is mum to two children aged 3 and 6. "It's the sacrifice you make," she says. "Most of my time is spent mothering, lots of mothering."
But when she read the script for Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing - a play about the things love makes us do - Healey knew it would be this year's piece for her. "I read it and I could see myself doing it. I just loved it."
Lovatt and Healey are among the seven-strong cast of the multi-award-winning romantic comedy, which asks complex questions about love and marriage.
And because it is written by Stoppard, one of the world's sharpest stage and screen writers, there is little opportunity to miss a beat.
Although Stoppard's biggest claim to fame could well be the screenplay for Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love, it was The Real Thing, first performed in London in 1982, that marked a turning point in his writing.
Previously noted for witty and literary plays which dealt with philosophical issues - think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - The Real Thing combined this with a loosely autobiographical story about falling in love.
So simple yet so complex, it led critics like the Spectator's Sheridan Morley to declare "this was the one that first showed us Stoppard has a heart as well as a head".
Healey describes it as challenging, intellectual and tremendously funny and human.
"You've got to have a fit mouth all right," agrees Lovatt. "It's a little bit like fencing in that you can't lose the rhythm. You've really got to be on top of your game, to listen very carefully and respond right on cue."
Lovatt plays Henry, a detached but talented playwright always ready with a one-liner. Healey is his smart and sophisticated actress wife and Claire Chitham plays the incandescent "other woman" who casts Henry as the philandering husband.
Suddenly the normally emotionally buttoned-down Henry is lost. He's in love and his previous obsessions - writing and pop music - are of no help in making sense of the situation.
"I guess ultimately it's about forgiveness of human frailty," says Lovatt, "but it's not proscriptive. Stoppard offers a narrative, an idea or a feeling and you can decide whether it's right or wrong."
The piece poses other challenges for Lovatt. Earlier this year, he took the solo show The End of the Golden Weather around the North Island and says he quickly adjusted to working at his own pace.
"It's tricky when you return to work with other actors to get used to waiting and responding to the cues, to someone else's rhythm particularly on a piece like The Real Thing where you have to be so sharp and in tune with one another."
Healey, on the other hand, says she admires Lovatt's courage to take on a one-person show.
"I couldn't think of anything worse. I mean I'd have no one to gossip to in the dressing room," she exclaims with a theatrical shudder. "One of the best things about The Real Thing is getting to work with my mates and those words - they are simply delicious."
The Real Thing also stars Cameron Rhodes, Paul Ellis, Michelle Blundell and Brian Rankin, and it is directed by Silo's creative director Shane Bosher.
