by Fintan O'Toole
One of the intriguing things about theater is the way that plays sometimes say the exact opposite of what their author intended. This is what happens in David Leveaux' superb production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.
Of all the English playwrights who came to prominence in the 1960s, only two were so distinctive that their names came to sum up a whole style. If critics wanted to indicate clipped phrases and an air of menace, they called a play Pinteresque. If they wanted to indicate verbal wit and intellectual games, it was Stoppardian.
Tom Stoppard's reputation for dashing repartee and dazzling ingenuity was well-earned. But it carried with it a feeling that the cleverness was just a fireworks display � colorful, entertaining, at times awesomely impressive, but without real emotion.
The Real Thing, returning to Broadway for the first time since Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons played the leads in 1984, is meant to refute this notion.
Its central character, Henry, is an English playwright rather like Stoppard himself: brilliant, witty, arrogant and intolerant of those he regards as stupid.
The play is steeped in all things theatrical. The opening scene is an episode from Henry's latest play. One of the stars, Charlotte, is his wife. The other, Max, is the husband of the woman with whom Henry is having an affair.
By the second half of The Real Thing, Henry is living with Max' ex-wife, Annie. Because she, too, is an actress, the dialogue and the action are saturated with theatrical references and in-jokes. But Henry, despite being an intellectual, turns out to be a passionate romantic. And through him, Stoppard wants us to know that he can write a play about that most basic of all emotions, love.
The irony, though, is that The Real Thing remains stubbornly Stoppardian. There's less to all the stuff about love than meets the eye. What works is the verbal energy and the clever game-playing.
This isn't the fault of the production; on the contrary, Stephen Dillane as Henry and Jennifer Ehle as Annie are a playwright's dream. Dillane strikes a skillful balance between Henry's arrogance, sarcasm and impatience on the one hand and his yearning for love on the other. Without softening the character too much, he makes us understand why Henry is attractive to women.
Ehle, meanwhile, glows with life, intelligence and sensuality. Her Annie is both kind and dangerous, so open and compassionate that she seems doomed to break hearts.
So if there's something abstract about the play, it's not because the actors fail to put flesh on Stoppard's ideas. Or because the web of loyalties and betrayals is not spun by a writer of extraordinary dexterity and invention.
Maybe it's just that, like Henry, Stoppard finds it hard to "write love" without it coming out "embarrassing � either childish or rude." And because he's far too dignified to write embarrassing lines, he prefers to write "about" love than to run the risk of sentimentality.
The result may not be completely satisfying or convincing. But it does suggest that there are far worse things a playwright can be called than "Stoppardian."
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