"The Stages Of Their Relationship"
J. Kelly Nestruck

Stuart Hughes and Megan Follows draw on nearly a decade together for their starring roles in Sam Shepard's Fool for Love.

It was in the Harbourfront Centre Theatre that Stuart Hughes met Megan Follows face to face for the first time. The two actors were cast opposite each other in a 1996 production of Howard Barker's Seven Lears, and from the very first rehearsal Hughes was smitten.

"She walked in the door and immediately I just had one of those moments -- a moment of grace," recalls Hughes.

It took Follows a little while longer to warm to the idea of a romance with Hughes. The actress known across the country from the Anne of Green Gables movies had just come out of a tumultuous marriage and was wary about getting into a relationship with anyone. "I was recently a single parent with two very little ones," recalls Follows, sitting next to Hughes on a couch in the green room of the Toronto theatre where they met. "It was a new world. So Stuart was very patient with me." She caved at the opening night party and they've been partners ever since.

Nearly a decade later, Follows and Hughes are reunited on the same stage in Sam Shepard's Fool for Love -- the fifth time the two have acted together. Opening tonight, the Soulpepper company production stars the couple as May and Eddie, ex-lovers who reconnect in a motel room on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert.

"It's a play about men and women," says Follows, who has been engaged to Hughes for the past four years. "About the ability or inability to function as a unit. Anybody who's been in a long-term relationship understands that dynamic."

"The ebb and flow of that dynamic," clarifies Hughes, a founding member of the acclaimed Toronto company and two-time Dora winner.

"It's about men and women," Follows continues. "Do they perceive things the same way, do they not ..."

"How they come together," Hughes follows. "What keeps them apart."

"Can you live with them, can you not live with them ..."

"... where the differences are and how do they resolve those differences."

As they ping-pong Fool for Love's themes back and forth, the couple's body language matches the manner in which they complete and complement each other's sentences. At different moments during the interview, Hughes reaches over and puts his arm around Follows or she gently massages the back of his neck with an outstretched arm. Their legs touch beneath the coffee table at their feet.

Fool for Love features more violent quarrels than love scenes, but knowing each other intimately has helped the two actors master the difficult material. "It has stimulated a lot of conversations, that's for sure," says Follows, who has a habit of winking and smiling whenever she makes a joke or leaves something to the imagination.

Before Fool for Love, neither Follows nor Hughes had been in a play by Shepard, whose works include True West, A Lie of the Mind and the Pulitzer-prize winning Buried Child. They did, however, have another connection to the U.S. playwright and Oscar-nominated actor (who can currently be seen in, of all things, the action flick Stealth).

Right before she met Hughes, Follows purchased a farmhouse in Nova Scotia that had once been owned by Shepard. The playwright had lived in the old sea captain's residence on the Bay of Fundy in the '70s with his first wife, O-Lan, and their son Jesse -- allegedly, while he was dodging the Vietnam War during the draft. Though there was another owner in-between, Follows and Hughes have come across the occasional photo of Shepard while working on the house.

The locals have plenty to tell about Shepard's short time there and his visits from hippie friends such as Bob Dylan. "They all have this story about [Shepard] rolling into town in his Volvo with a goat in the car," notes Hughes, who, like Follows, splits his time between Toronto and Los Angeles.

It's at the Nova Scotian farmhouse that Follows and Hughes hope to get married when they finally do tie the knot. Though they sometimes identify each other as husband and wife, they haven't exchanged vows officially yet for the same reasons it took them so long to appear at Soulpepper together. Actors have busy schedules and one of the other is always in a play or off filming.

Follows' recent projects include playing Shania Twain's mother in the upcoming CBC-TV movie Shania: A Life in Eight Albums and developing a six-part series called My Mother's House for the public broadcaster, an autobiographical "black comedy" about moving in with her mother after her divorce that she is writing with her sister Edwina. As for Hughes, his next stop is in Ottawa for a remount of Soulpepper's acclaimed double-bill of The Zoo Story and The Dumb Waiter at the National Arts Centre.

But, for now at least, the two are in the same city with a 13- year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, as well as their dog. "It's been a real pleasure to wake up in the morning, fire on the coffee and listen to the CBC for a half hour, before we get on our bikes and bike down to work," says Hughes, as Follows smiles and winks in agreement. "It's been for me one of the nicest summers I've had."

Source: National Post