April 19, 2000
by Amy Gamerman
In Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, newly revived at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Henry, a playwright, pulls out an old cricket bat to describe what he does for a living. The bat just looks like a wood club, but as Henry explains, it's actually several particularly chosen pieces of wood, "cunningly put together" to create a launchpad. If the bat is well made, it will smack balls into the air with speed and grace.
"What we're trying to do," says Henry (Stephen Dillane), "is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel."
Mr. Stoppard writes some of the best cricket bats in the business. Ideas travel first class in The Real Thing, floating on a play of words so sparkling and so effortless, you don't even see the bat - just the ball. (This is in contrast to Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, a play that concentrates your eye on the painstaking workmanship of the wooden club.) The ideas that Mr. Stoppard bats around in this 1982 play, staged by David Leveaux in a glossy import from London's Donmar Warehouse, concern true love - the real thing - and the ways people step all over each other to get it. It's also about writing plays, which for Mr. Stoppard is another form of love, and a very real one.
Of course, realness is a highly loaded concept in Stoppard territory. He plays brilliantly with our sense of what's true and what's make-believe in the opening scene of The Real Thing, in which Max (Nigel Lindsay) confronts his wife, Charlotte (wryly played by Sarah Woodward), with the apparent proof of her infidelity. In the next scene, Charlotte staggers out of bed in a man's bathrobe to join Henry in the living room. We assume he's her lover. But it's really they who are married: Charlotte is an actress, and the domestic confrontation we've just witnessed is a scene from a play written by Henry (funny how that bathrobe morphs from sexy to frumpy the instant we realize that Charlotte is a respectable wife and mother).
In fact, Henry is the one who's having an affair - with Annie (a radiant Jennifer Ehle), who happens to be the wife of his leading man, Max. They show up for brunch, Annie, who is also an actress, is so giddy with love and the secrecy of it that she seems high. Urging Henry to make a clean break of it, Ms. Ehle all but giggles as she delivers the line, "It's only a couple of marriages and a child."
The Real Thing traces intricate patterns of passion and deceit as Annie and Henry leave their spouses (and a teenage daughter in his case) to marry, only to find themselves wondering if their love is the real thing after all. The "real" scenes these people act out blur with the scenes that they act in: Mr. Stoppard throws snippets of Strindberg's Miss Julie and Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore into the mix, not to mention a clunky scene by a talentless jailhouse playwright who's a minor character in the play.
The British cast negotiates this hall of mirrors with great agility, led by the edgy Mr. Dillane. His Henry is the smartest guy in the room, the one who's always quick with a comeback (both wives come to hate him for it). But this doesn't make him look better than everyone else - quite the opposite. Padding around the stage in his socks, Henry seems permanently scuffed around the edges. Words are his refuge. But with Mr. Stoppard at the typewriter, what a glorious refuge they make. And wouldn't you know it? He's given his playwright all the best lines.
Back to The Real Thing Article Index