First he warmed our hearts with the romanitc trysts of Shakespeare in Love, now Tom Stoppard is about to appeal to them again when his 1982 play The Real Thing opens at the Donmar this week.
For a playwright typically associated with displays of cerebral fencing rather than romantic feeling, Stoppard is bringing us rather a lot of love at the moment.
The Real Thing, traditionally regarded as the only play in which Stoppard treats love as a consistent them, centres on another playwright, the adulterous Henry, played by Stephen Dillane, whose object of adoration is Annie, played by Jennifer Ehle.
Director David Leveaux first saw the play in New York some years ago. 'Its brilliant construction and tantalising wit had always impressed me, but on re-reading it last year I was struck by how touching it was. It is one of the few plays in which Stoppard shows us the chaos of the heart instead of the paradigm of the brain,' he says.
The phrase The Real Thing has toppled into the dustbin of cliches alongside worn-out lines such as Happy Ever After, or Mr. Right. This is greeting card language, statements of ideals that have become mockeries of themselves. We might spend or lives secretly chasing the perfection they imply, but use these words and people will laugh. What is The Real Thing in Stoppard's play?
'Annie and Henry do find something real, even if they are simultaneously aware it is elusive,' says Leveaux. 'Stoppard doesn't set out to show that love is an illusion, more that it is something that can be realistically achieved.'
What, no cynicism? No disintegration of the deam? No voguish reduction of relationships into a boxing ring for two egos?
'It has a fundamental gesture of optimism, which is why it is such a lovely play to work on. Nor is there any death, which is another reason I chose it. But neither there a sentimental resolution. The play is very striking because it isn't neat.'
Stoppard treats the subject of love by delibrately dismantling its traditional clever conceits to achieve a position of honesty - a state described by Henry as one of 'mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness.'
Confronting these truths enables him and Annie to push through to some other side, to continue with hope.
Leveaux has always admired Stoppard's humanism, the way he demonstrates the processes we go through.
'He is a ruthlessly precise writer and is never seduced by his own capacity for wit. Each line is derived from something honest. Best of all, when it comes to love, he's a believer.'
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