"Once I believed that when love came to me

It would come with rockets, bells and poetry

But with me and you, it just started quietly and grew.”

- “It’s Getting Better,” The Mama’s and the Papa’s

Like it or not, February is known as the month of love. For those of us who are unhappily single or even unhappily attached, the abundance of heart shaped decorations, sash-wearing babies with bows and arrows, and cheap chocolates, causes us to curse Hallmark and update our Facebook statuses with bitter diatribes about commercialism.

Those of us who are starry eyed and in love make everyone else sick with our doe-eyed eagerness to buy human sized teddy bears and spend $9.99 on a greeting card that sings “Love Me Tender” when you open it.

Whatever category we find ourselves in, sometimes we’re in the mood for a realistic love story; one that doesn’t involve Katherine Heigl or Ashton Kutcher. Edmonton’s Walterdale Playhouse has just the thing to soothe the savage beast inside us that is prowling for something a little more interesting. Enter, Beautiful Thing, a play about working class teens finding love in a bleak housing project in London. Written by Jonathan Harvey (a writer for Coronation Street and most recently, Beautiful People), this sharp English comedy covers the gamut from the serious subject of physical abuse to a drugged out Mama Cass worshipper, and the sparks of hope and romance that can be born in a grim environment.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill cheesy romance, says Justen Bennett, director of the Walterdale production of the play. “While Beautiful Thing has some tenderness, I wouldn’t call it sentimental. There are rough sides to these characters. People insult each other in this play, they tease one another, they fight, and underneath it all they do care for one another. It’s tender, but it’s real; it’s not sentimental.”

This will mark the first time that Beautiful Thing has been produced in Alberta, although it has had a full life since its start in the early 90’s. Bennett talks about the play’s beginnings in England. “When it premiered in the UK in 1993, Beautiful Thing was one of the very few plays about gay culture that didn’t deal with oppression or AIDS and death. Jonathan Harvey subtitled it ‘An Urban Fairytale’ because there is a happy ending; it is a love story. That was very new for the time.”

For its time, a more positive look at sexuality was indeed hard to find. In essence, the play was risky even to the open-minded, because people were used to darker subject material on stage, and not-so-happy endings. This shift in focus may be why it struck such a chord, so much so that it was made into a film in 1996. If The Mama’s and The Papa’s makes you feel all groovy and warm inside, you’ll love the soundtrack, as every song is performed by them. Although it’s been well over a decade since its release, it’s still revered as a significant film, having just taken fifth place on AfterElton.com’s 2009 poll of the Fifty Greatest Gay Movies.

Bennett notes the importance and relevance of the story, both in the past and present. “For me, Beautiful Thing is no longer an edgy play, and that’s fantastic. That a story about two young boys simply falling in love is regarded by many, not as a threat or even as a gay play, but as a love story, just shows how far the GLBT movement has progressed. There are, however, still roadblocks. Even in Alberta with recent government decisions such as de-listing sex change surgeries and Bill 44, the GLBT community faces forms of discrimination. It’s important to be out there with stories like this that remind everyone there is far more we share in the human experience that makes us the same, than makes us different.”

An emerging local director, actor, and sometime playwright, Bennett recently wrote and directed Addition: An Unconventional Love Story at the 2009 Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. Addition is a comedy about a loving gay couple who decide to bring a third into their bed (now that romantic evenings filled with Scrabble just aren’t cutting it any more). It received 4.5 stars from Edmonton’s Vue Weekly. There will be a reading of the play at a fundraiser for HIV Edmonton this coming April.

Considering Bennett’s history both in breaking conventions and with comedy, it’s a good bet that the wit and heart of Harvey’s Beautiful Thing will shine right on through the foggy streets of London. The show opens on February 10th and if you’re stuck for a Valentine’s date idea or can’t stand the thought of sitting at home in your sweatpants, they have two shows on the 14th. So even if we disagree on our support of Hallmark, maybe we can still all agree on the power of a great story to pull ourselves outside of our heads and believe in the magical yet elusive possibility of a crazy little thing called love.