'The Real Thing' review – this witty, strikingly cast Stoppard revival balances brilliance with a beating heart

Read our review of Tom Stoppard's drama The Real Thing, starring James McArdle and Bel Powley, now in performances at the Old Vic to 26 October.

What a pleasure to have Tom Stoppard’s brilliantly inventive 1982 Tony-winning play The Real Thing back in London. Even better, both its formal daring and its frank, subversive portrait of complicated relationships are thoughtfully handled in Max Webster’s stylish and strikingly cast revival.

A superb James McArdle plays Henry, Stoppard’s semi-autobiographical, self-lacerating portrait of a pedantic-to-a-fault playwright who is married to one actress, Charlotte, and sleeping with another, Annie. This metatheatrical project gained extra frisson from Stoppard, in real life, subsequently beginning an affair with his star, Felicity Kendal. You couldn’t write it (except that he did).

That blurring of life and fiction, truth and deception, marriage and betrayal is key to this richly layered piece, which weaves in several other plays as it asks the audience a still-vital question: does the most effective art hew closely to messy reality, or are the fundamental truths about humanity better illuminated via skilfully crafted poetry?

Now, we might express that in terms of who has the right to write, and how much value we place on “lived experience”. The intellectually snobbish Henry is a stubborn, elitist gatekeeper, whereas Annie advocates for an admittedly terrible and politically clumsy debut play by an imprisoned protestor, Brodie. At least he has something to say, she argues – but, reasons Stoppard via Henry, surely it also matters how he says it. “I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are.”

Stoppard does stack the deck – it’s hard not to be seduced by his erudite way with language, whereas Brodie is pretty much a punch-line – but the show also sets up a fascinating tug-of-war between so-called high and low culture. A very funny thread sees Henry trying to choose his Desert Island Discs, fretting that he really prefers the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” to classical heavyweights.

Webster beautifully punctuates his production with pop music (a record player sits on the edge of the stage) – sometimes to comic effect, as when Henry and the stagehands do the mashed potato to “Mr Blue Sky”, but always illuminating character and emotion. Conversely, a scene in which Annie and castmate Billy flirt via the blank verse of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore crackles with electricity, much sexier for what is implied rather than bluntly spoken.

Throughout, McArdle finds an effective balance between making Henry a facetious, maddening hypocrite and a surprisingly vulnerable romantic, adrift among the modern women who take a more pragmatic view. Stoppard does firmly prioritise the male point of view here, but the excellent Bel Powley adds depth and fire to Annie, while Susan Wokoma’s powerful, punchy Charlotte is more than a match for Henry.

Oliver Johnstone creates an amusing contrast between the quippy character we first meet in Henry’s overwrought play-within-a-play, House of Cards, and his real-life bumbling actor counterpart. There’s also strong support from Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran’s charismatic Billy and Karisa Yansen as Henry’s daughter Debbie, who horrifies her father by reducing complex theories to pithy soundbites – another point that feels oddly contemporary.

Webster’s production emphasises the constant intermingling of life and performance through Peter McKintosh’s set, Richard Howell’s lighting and Chi-San Howard’s movement. The actors are contained within a neon square, as though their characters are always on stage, and the crew often interact with them during witty scene changes.

That welcome physicality makes this verbose piece more digestible, and the passionate performances help to counter the charge that Stoppard is merely a “clever” writer. Listen to McArdle’s Henry confess his intimate truth that “knowing, being known” is the most exquisite joy of love, and you discover that the playwright’s much-vaunted articulacy is in service of a beating heart.

The Real Thing is at the Old Vic through 26 October. Book The Real Thing tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credit: The Real Thing (Photos by Manuel Harlan)