The Real Thing

The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard is a play that explores the nature of love and how it means different things to different people. Stoppard uses the play-within-a-play structure to explore with ideas of reality, honesty, fidelity and love. There isn't much happening plot-wise in this play, rather, the audience just gets short glimpses into the lives of people and their relationships with others. As often in Stoppard's writing, certain scenes & phrases repeat throughout the play with small variations. In The Real thing one of the repeating scenes is of a wife returning home after a trip to a husband who thinks he has evidence of her infidelity in the form of the gift she brings.

The composite set worked well for the various living room scenes required. The slight change in the arrangement of the furniture allowed the audience to accept the change of place and time. The set was detailed enough to add interest within scenes but simple enough to not distract from the dialogue and intentions.

Max played by Carl Gratty was portrayed as quite a shallow character particularly compared to Henry. His slight awkwardness and stilted delivery worked well for the character. Charlotte, the first wife of Henry and the lead actress in Henry's play, was portrayed by  Samantha Green and was a good contrast to Annie. Samantha managed to maintain the character through both the delivery of the dialogue and in her relationships with the other actors. Henry , the playwright around which this story revolved, was acted with easy confidence by Alec Voss. Alec managed to bring out the humour in the many, many  words he had to learn and his delivery of these sections added the light relief needed. Alec showed a range of emotions which enabled the audience to connect with him. Harri Bailey, playing firstly the mistress then second wife to Henry, gave a very natural performance moving with ease around the set and establishing a great rapport with the other characters. The physicality of her performance added depth to her rather complex character. Leo Capernaros, playing Billy, an actor working alongside Henry's second wife, has a very charismatic stage presence and the relationship between his character and Annie was dynamic and believable. I wasn't quite sure of the purpose of the character Debbie (Lucy Parker), who was Henry and Charlotte's daughter, other than to show another relationship dynamic. We had a fleeting glimpse of an independent woman and the typical teenage relationship with her parents, although like Father like daughter she also had a way with words Lucy was confident in her portrayal of this young and feisty  character and the father and daughter relationship was immensely believable. Although talked about throughout the play Brodie was a tiny on stage role which didn't really answer the many questions raised about who he  was and how he influenced the different characters. Sam Parton played a brooding Scottish man with conviction giving the impression that he felt he deserved more from those he came into contact with than what he got.                              

This was a very wordy play that took a lot of concentration to get the most from it. Certain themes and ideas were obvious but many things would need more than one reading of the play to understand. It was however directed and acted well, making it accessible to the audience.

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