The Real Thing: Stoppard revival is 'witty' and 'wise'

James McArdle as Henry and Susan Wokoma as Charlotte in The Real Thing

(Image credit: Manuel Harlan)

London's autumn season is bookended by "weighty Stoppards", said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. In December, "The Invention of Love" (1997), Sir Tom's erudite portrait of A.E. Housman, is being revived at the Hampstead Theatre. But first we have this "cleverly engaging" – if "not wholly lovable" – staging of "The Real Thing" (1982), one of his most "accessible and emotionally resonant successes".

This "witty", twisty play has as its central character a distinctly Stoppard-like playwright named Henry, said Will Lloyd in The Sunday Times. Henry's actress wife, Charlotte, is starring in his latest play as a woman who is suspected of cheating on her husband. But Henry has left her for a younger actress, Annie, whose actor husband has been cast in Henry's play as the possible cuckold. Meanwhile Annie, alas, seems to be falling for another actor, named Billy. "Got that? Nobody ever said affairs of the heart were straightforward."

"The Real Thing" is one of Stoppard's most popular plays, said Sarah Crompton on What's on Stage: it has "all the whirling wit of his early work", and its subject is "the most important in the world – what it means to love and be loved". At the heart of Max Webster's sophisticated revival is a "sensational performance" from James McArdle, who beautifully conveys both Henry's "monstrous self-satisfaction and his deep and abiding confusion".