‘The Real Thing’ – play is a smart, rich comedy of feelings, passion and personal agendas and vintage Stoppard

Described as dazzling, you can see why this play hasn’t lost any of its verve since it was first performed in 1982…

AS YOU MIGHT expect of one of Britain’s most brilliant playwrights – Sir Tom Stoppard – this is a thoughtful, surprising and highly inventive play (if you have not seen it before, that is).

The drama really comes into its own in the second half – and is centred around a playwright Henry (James McArdle) and his second actor wife Annie (Bel Powley) who is the standout among a very solid and dependable cast.

Henry is in many ways a mouthpiece for Sir Tom – and what a very fine mouthpiece it is – the language is rich, the sentiment precisely and beautifully expressed and you feel empathy for Henry, even though, especially in the first half, he is an awfully self-centred prig… and we see his evolution, growth and wisdom in the second part and again you can’t help feeling this might be the sort of personal journey perhaps Sir Tom went on himself. He wrote it when he was 45 and he is now 87 and had already been writing plays for some 20 plus years.

The opening seems a tad frivolous – a couple at the end of their relationship and the discovery or uncovering of an affair.

Max (Oliver Johnstone) and Charlotte (Susan Wokoma) engage in smart, entertaining and sharp repartee, as Max realises he has been cuckolded.

This opening seems slight, whiny, and drenched in privileged middle class angst and the sort of the play that goes down extremely well in the Home Counties but is hardly reflective of modern contemporary urban Britain (ie London). Okay Charlotte (in this production) is black…

It did get much better and more meaningful with the realisation (SPOILER ALERT) that Max and Charlotte were reprising a scene from one of Henry’s plays…

From this opening, the play does pick up pace and is entertaining and clever, if a little light on what it all means and where it is going exactly…until the interval and the second half.

It is with Annie and Henry settled into nuptial bliss that the play really takes off…

Powley is brilliant, holding the stage with an effervescent energy that is hard to resist and to which Henry has also succumbed and now, in his second marriage (?) and another actor wife – he feels he has arrived quite probably at ‘The Real Thing’, whereas his first marriage faltered and broke down because it wasn’t. There’s a lot underneath the surface about what is real and what do our feelings really amount to? Are they real, like facts? What are facts in personal relationships? Do they change over time?

Into this maelstrom of heightened emotions, steps Glaswegian Brodie (Jack Ambrose) though we don’t see him until much later – but a lot is said about him and the play he has written.

He befriended Annie on a train from Glasgow to London and is a rebel and activist – for what is not entirely clear – but he is discernibly an anti-establishment figure and one who craves attention for his causes (and himself?).

Annie takes something of a shine to him (Henry asks, “do you fancy him?”) – or is it that she feels guilty (as in ‘middle class guilt’?) or is she genuinely moved by his arguments and is impressed by his ability to articulate his rage and frustration – though not on paper, it has to be said.

Annie shows Henry, Brodie’s efforts – and as you would expect, her husband is withering and disdainful. He refuses to help and says Brodie is no writer.

It is in this second half that you can almost hear Stoppard himself talk and extoll the benefits of writing and words and the art of drama itself. Frankly, Brodie has nothing to offer, either as a writer or as a man (though Henry doesn’t quite say the latter).

Annie is a bit disappointed but still holds some hope that something can be made of Brodie’s play.

And there, steps in Billy (Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran) – a sort of new theatre, hip modern figure dramaturg/actor/playwright – he too concurs “Brodie cannot write” then salvages and adapts what he can and we see the result performed on the stage, in rehearsals with production staff lolling about, and then again in reality…? Keeping up?

Billy is all swagger and pout, young and on it, as the kids might say and Annie finds herself drawn in…

We are back where we started with a couple who seem like they are going to pull apart but then Stoppard re-introduces us to Charlotte later in life and Henry’s now grown up adult daughter from his relationship with Charlotte – Debbie (Karise Yansen). She is about to go travelling after uni with her boyfriend.

The finale is with Brodie meeting Henry – and well, you can guess how that goes. There’s a brooding machismo that Stoppard probably underwrites.

The sets by Peter McKintosh (who also does Costume) are simple and the staging of the plays within the play give no further physical clues. Directed by Max Webster, who also took the helm with Life of Pi – this drama within drama and needs particular care and the cast rise to the task.

This is a brilliant play of ideas, emotions, desires and dreams and Stoppard’s skill as playwright is to weave them all together with the strong central character of Henry acting as the play’s motherboard and (compromised?) moral compass.

First performed in 1982, it hasn’t dated because of the quality of the writing…and anyone who appreciates that should not fail to be entertained or intellectually provoked.

ACV rating:**** (would be five, but it is a play about a playwright and actors)…

Lead picture: Henry (McArdle) and Charlotte (Susan Wokoma)

All pictures: ©TheOldVic/ManuelHarlan

‘The Real Thing’ by Sir Tom Stoppard (August 22-October 26), The Old Vic, The Cut, London SE1 8NB
More Info/tickets: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/stage/event/the-real-thing

2 hours and 30 minutes (includes 20-minute interval)
14+