April 18, 2000
By Donald Lyons
4 stars
At the Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St.;
(212) 239-6200.
The Real Thing is the real thing - an exciting, hilarious and beautifully performed look at the terrain of art and heart.
The Tom Stoppard play of 1984 received a fresh, brisk production at London's Donmar Warehouse this spring, and it is this show, with its cast intact, that has moved to Broadway's Barrymore Theatre.
In the course of this teasingly tricky investigation of human relationships, we discover that the stage is and is not life. The look of the play's production is modern and abstract - the set and costumes by Vicki Mortimer suggest both the stage and reality. Director David Leveaux has thrust the action forward and made it more vivid than at the Donmar.
As the play opens, architect Max (played by Nigel Lindsay in a solid, smugly comic job) is discovering what seems like adultery by his wife, Charlotte (Sarah Woodward in a debonair, droll vein.) This turns out to be a scene in a play, after which we're at home with Charlotte and her playwright husband, Henry (Stephen Dillane in a miraculous, masterful performance.)
Henry slouches about their house in scruffy duds, playing Herman's Hermits and Procol Harum, working out his surprising destiny - which is largely connected to the young actress Annie, who is Max's real-life wife.
Moments after they arrive, Annie expresses her passion for Henry - while Max and Charlotte are in the kitchen making crudites.
Jennifer Ehle (seen here on TV in Pride and Prejudice) plays Annie with a surprising sensuality and politically committed spirit. Gorgeous and fiery, Ehle is a thrill to watch.
Two years later, Annie and Henry are still together. She's going up to Glasgow to do the Jacobean incest drama " 'Tis Pity She's a Whore." He's being nasty about a script she's interested in, written by a self-styled political prisoner, Brodie, who Henry thinks is a horrible writer.
On the train to Scotland, Annie meets the young actor Billy (Oscar Pierce), who plays her brother in "Pity," and she warms to him, finding him ideal for the prisoner script.
Henry, who has fixed up the script despite his objections, frets her absence. Eventually, Annie admits her attraction to Billy, but insists that this need not threaten the relationship she has with Henry.
After a time, Henry accepts her point of view - after, among other things, talking to his 17-year-old daughter Debbie (a fine performance by Charlotte Parry).
Dillane is hilarious and wrenchingly touching as the man who learns to blend his writing skills and his emotional life. Ehle achieves subtlety and sense as a woman who mixes art and life.
This is an extraordinary presentation of a funny, smart play vibrating with contemporary concerns - art and life and sex and sacrifice and rock classics.
It's the play in which Stoppard found the English - and, through the English, himself - approachable. And it's gorgeously performed by, above all, the witty and achingly vulnerable Dillane.
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