For many critics, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing is their favourite Stoppard play. I have to admit it has never been mine. I originally saw it in 1982, its premiere, and then again in 2000. Seeing it now for the third time, does not make me change my mind.
Stoppard doesn’t make it easy for audiences, talking above their heads and liable suddenly to drift into other people’s plays. In this particular case it’s John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s A Whore.
What is the real thing? Is it marriage or random affairs? There are no commitments in marriage; only bargains. The characters run the full gamut of suspicion, jealousy, anger, guilt, remorse and humiliation.
Does art imitate life? Or is it the other way round? The Real Thing is, perhaps, Stoppard’s most autobiographical play, drawing, as it did, on his own love affair.
Henry, the leading character, is a playwright and married. “I don’t know how to write love,” he claims. “I try to write it properly and it just comes out embarrassing. It’s either childish or it’s rude.”
Henry falls in love with Annie a married actress. She then deceives him with a young actor. She explains that because she is unfaithful, it doesn’t mean she loves him any the less. “I have to choose whom I hurt and I choose you because I’m yours.”
“I don’t believe in behaving well,” says Henry, who protects himself with sarcasm. “I don’t believe in debonair relationships. I believe in mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness.”
The best performance comes from James McArdle as Henry. Max Webster’s production is chiefly notable for its use of the stage management who are choreographed and given a big production number to open the second act.
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