Synopsis Henry is a successful and talented playwright married to Charlotte, an actress playing the lead in his current play about adultery. Her co-star and friend Max, is married to Annie, also an actor. Henry and Annie have fallen in love but is it any more real than the subjects in Henry’s play? As the story unravels, Henry discovers that love - ‘the real thing’ - can be unpredictable and painful.
The Real Thing lived up to its title for critics last night (21 April 2010, previews from 10 April), with the opening of Anna Mackmin’s revival at the Old Vic. Tom Stoppard’s 1982 award-winner was hailed as a modern classic that not only stands the test of time but “gets richer with each viewing”.
Henry (Toby Stephens is married to Charlotte (Fenella Woolgar), an actress playing the lead in his current play about adultery. Her co-star Max (Barnaby Kay) is married to Annie (Hattie Morahan), also an actor. When Henry and Annie fall in love, Henry discovers that love - ‘the real thing’ - can be unpredictable and painful.
When it premiered in London and New York in the 1980s, The Real Thing won the Evening Standard and Tony Awards for Best Play. It was famously revived at the Donmar Warehouse in 1999, in a production that starred Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle as Henry and Annie. The following year, that production also transferred first to the West End and then on to Broadway, where it won three Tony Awards, for Best Revival of a Play and Best Actor and Actress for Dillane and Ehle.
The new production, which continues until 5 June 2010, returns Stoppard’s work to the Old Vic, where his first play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, was a breakthrough hit for the then-resident National Theatre in 1967. The cast also includes Tom Austen, Louise Calf and Jordan Young. Design is by Lez Brotherston.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “The Real Thing is gloriously revived at the Old Vic by director Anna Mackmin, not only as the play that in 1982 confirmed that Stoppard had a heart, but as a stylish comedy classic dealing in love, jealousy, pop music, political theatre and great jokes. And in the performances of Toby Stephens as the playwright Henry and Hattie Morahan as his actress lover and second wife Annie, we have the best romantic double act on the London stage in a very long time … There is good work from Barnaby Kay as the cuckolded actor Max and Louise Calf as the daughter who ate like a horse until she owned one. But the evening belongs to Stephens and Morahan, coming into their kingdom as light comedians with hidden depths. Stephens has ironed out some vocal mannerisms and sharpened his intellectual capacity no end, while Morahan glows with high spirits and happiness. They are a perfect match.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) – “Back in 1982, when it was first seen, few would have guessed that this play would turn out to be amongst Tom Stoppard's most durable. But like that other study of bourgeois adultery, Harold Pinter's Betrayal, it gets richer with each viewing; and, even if Anna Mackmin's revival is not flawless, it deftly shows how Stoppard puts structural ingenuity to the service of emotional truth … Mackmin's production misses the mannered Cowardesque suavity of the initial play-within-a-play scene that sets up the adultery motif. But where her production scores is through Toby Stephens' masterful performance as Henry. More than previous occupants of the role, Stephens brings out Henry's supercilious arrogance and ironic detachment … Laced with Stoppard's characteristic wit … Stoppard is here writing, with incomparable grace and style and in a way we can all recognise, about the high cost of loving.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) – “Anna Mackmin’s fine revival sustains your interest in the unfurling plot and unravelling relationships but does equal justice to the play’s considerable complexity … Intricate stuff, fascinating stuff, the more so because Mackmin has got excellent performances from her principals. At first I found Hattie Morahan too elfin, too pixilated, but she quickly revealed herself as the sort of pixie, imp or sprite who isn’t only wayward and mischievous but capable of injury. And Toby Stephens seems frighteningly urbane as he delivers polished lines and smart retorts galore, yet he ends up being what the play demands. He’s vulnerable. He hurts. He has deepened — and so has Tom Stoppard’s work.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (four stars) – “Tom Stoppard is often characterised as a dramatist who mixes intimidating cleverness with extravagant showmanship, but in Anna Mackmin’s humane revival of this play from 1982 he seems passionate and poignant … Structurally ingenious; Stoppard’s play proposes a complex relationship between wit, morality, taste and truth. The central performances are excellent. As Annie, Hattie Morahan conveys the delicious madness of infatuation. She’s winsome when angry and playful when tender or incredulous. There’s strong work, too, from Fenella Woolgar as the angular, caustic Charlotte. Toby Stephens, who plays Henry, has never been better. He’s foppish, priapic and urbane, making the word ‘lacuna’ sound like a decadent holiday destination. Yet when he finds himself learning about what he calls ‘dignified cuckoldry’ he exhibits a wonderful delicacy. His pain is palpable … Stoppard is at his most sumptuously quotable throughout. While the trademark intelligence is evident, so is a bracing emotional honesty.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (five stars) – “The Real Thing is a play that glows with love’s warmth and burns with love’s pain. It certainly is not embarrassing, childish or rude, but it is manifestly deeply felt, and it is as close as Stoppard will ever come, I suspect, to writing a piece that is nakedly autobiographical. This is a piece that clearly comes from the heart … The Real Thing is also an unashamedly elitist play … Toby Stephens seems to be living his character’s emotions as he speaks. Hattie Morahan brings a lovely mixture of mischief, vulnerability and underlying toughness to a performance as Annie that put me in mind of the young Kendal. There is superb work too from Fenella Woolgar as Henry’s formidable wife … It’s a glorious play, in which Tom Stoppard’s wit and intellectual rigour is warmed by the glow of romance.”
Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing is gloriously revived at the Old Vic by director Anna Mackmin, not only as the play that in 1982 confirmed that Stoppard had a heart, but as a stylish comedy classic dealing in love, jealousy, pop music, political theatre and great jokes.
And in the performances of Toby Stephens as the playwright Henry and Hattie Morahan as his actress lover and second wife Annie, we have the best romantic double act on the London stage in a very long time.
At first they can hardly keep their hands off each other, even with Henry’s first wife Charlotte (Fenella Woolgar), also an actress, chopping up nibbles in the kitchen. But the bond is stretched when Annie insists on championing the rubbish play of a “pacifist hooligan” and then succumbs to the overtures of her co-star in a Glasgow revival of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.
There’s a wonderful, spring-heeled gaiety in Stoppard’s (and Henry’s) insistence on his obligation to language above causes – “save the gerund and screw the whale” – and his devotion to the most potently disarming of the lighter pop music, from the Righteous Brothers and the Ronettes to Neil Sedaka and Herman’s Hermits.
The comedy is layered, too, with an eye on performance: the opening scene is revealed as an adultery-charged scrap in Henry’s play, “House of Cards”, while Henry is at home preparing his selection of records for an appearance on Desert Island Discs.
And en route to an extract from Brodie’s dismal play, which Henry has agreed to doctor against his better instincts, but for love of Annie, we see Annie and the persistent actor Billy (Tom Austen, fresh from drama school, making a fine debut) consumed by incestuous passion in Glasgow.
This scene is cleverly played on the downstage ramp of Lez Brotherston’s framing white envelope of a set. Otherwise, the scene changes are neatly done with sliding panels and great lighting by Hugh Vanstone. There is good work from Barnaby Kay as the cuckolded actor Max and Louise Calf as the daughter who ate like a horse until she owned one.
But the evening belongs to Stephens and Morahan, coming into their kingdom as light comedians with hidden depths. Stephens has ironed out some vocal mannerisms and sharpened his intellectual capacity no end, while Morahan glows with high spirits and happiness. They are a perfect match, and they play beautifully, and very carefully, from start to finish.
Like Pinter's Betrayal, The Real Thing is regarded as Tom Stoppard's most autobiographical play. Unfortunately it displays Stoppard's love of oh-so-clever dialogue and wittisisms but at the expense of real heart and emotion. People may talk like this in Islington or Notting Hill but in real life most people resort to cliches at times of emotional stress, not an impersonation of Noel Coward. Also, if this really is based on Stoppard's life, Felicity Kendall and Miriam Stoppard must have been unbearable because both female characters are largely unsympathetic, not helped by both actresses choosing to shout rather than project. Toby Stephens (who also appeared in Betrayal recently) has toned down his usual level of smugness and makes the most of an admittedly clever script but sadly The Real Thing lacks the essential element of feeling real. Arcadia was one of my highlights of 2009 but this production (not helped by two long delays due to lighting problems) was a sad disappointment. - David Baxter
13 May 10
Tiresome, smug, insular and dull. Both my companion and I hated it. Granted, there are a few good lines but god, everyone is irritating. A big disappointment. - addicted to theatre
30 Apr 10
Based on his plays that preceded this one, which I first saw 28 years ago, I always thought Tom Stoppard was too glib for his own good - he always seemed to be showing off, clever clever and knowing in a way that frankly irritated me. This was the first of his plays where he seemed to be portraying real people, relationships and indeed love! I don't know whether it is, but it did seem to be autobiographical, then and now. Playwright Henry leaves his wife for the wife of her colleague / their friend and later finds this new relationship strained by his new wife's relationship with a younger colleague. It's cleverly structured with terrific sharp and witty dialogue and the character development is excellent. You really feel you know Henry very well two hours later. Anna Mackmin's staging is slick and fast paced, aided by Les Brotherston's set which moves between four flats with the rise / fall of panels. It's very well cast, with Toby Stephens a particularly good Henry (I preferred him to Roger Rees in the original production and Stephen Dillane in the Donmar's revival some time back). This is the Stoppard play to see even if you don't like Stoppard, because it's the least Stoppardian(!) and you'd be hard pressed to find a better revival. - Gareth James
The Old Vic is one of the oldest theatres in London and famous throughout the English speaking world. Long known as 'the actors theatre', many of the greatest performers of the last century have played on its stage. In September 2004, The Old Vic Theatre Company was launched, under the artistic leadership of Kevin Spacey, to present a wide range of work, from the classic to the new, to appeal to both traditional theatre-goers and new audiences.
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