The Real Thing
31/08/2007 - 29/09/2007
Production Details
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Shane Bosher
TOM STOPPARD TOYS WITH ROMANTIC COMEDY
Revered stage and screen writer Tom Stoppard’s multiple award-winning play THE REAL THING opens at Silo Theatre on August 31st bringing with it a fine stable of talent to the stage including Claire Chitham, Theresa Healey and Stephen Lovatt. In true Stoppard style THE REAL THING explores the emotional complexity of relationships in a darkly romantic tale peppered with touches of delicious voyeurism.
Czech born Stoppard has been omnipresent in the fields of stage and screen since his debut in 1966 with one of his most famous works, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His quick cut banter and sharp wordplay also were the basis for the 1993 hit Arcadia and his latest work, Rock ‘n’ Roll, set in Prague where music became symbolic to resistance from the Communist regime, which played to capacity attendance in the West End last year. In 2007, his nine hour epic The Coast of Utopia set a record for the most awards won by a play in Tony Award history, in a production featuring Ethan Hawke, Billy Crudup, Martha Plimpton and Jennifer Ehle.
Arguably his biggest claim to fame would be the screenplay for Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love, as well as contributing scripts towards successful Hollywood movies as Enigma, Empire of the Sun and the upcoming Matt Damon vehicle The Bourne Ultimatum. Stoppard is also rumored to be writing the next James Bond script.
THE REAL THING is loosely autobiographical and uses a playful theatrical structure which teases the audience into considering what is reality and what is art…
Henry (Stephen Lovatt) is a playwright. Afflicted by detachment and obsessed with pop music, he’s always ready to finish other people’s sentences with an apposite witticism. Despite this, he struggles to make sense of that most elusive of human emotions – love.
When an incandescent actress (Claire Chitham) casts him as the philandering husband, he’s forced to enact a situation he’s previously been content merely to write about. Suddenly, sophistication can’t save him: jealousy, tenderness and vulnerability aren’t merely his dramatic stock in trade, but genuinely powerful forces that obstruct rational thought and make him undignifiedm delicate and ultimately, human.
Internationally, THE REAL THING has attracted a slew of popular screen actors including British institution Felicity Kendal, Australia’s Hugo Weaving and Hollywood legends Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. Last performed in Auckland at the Mercury Theatre in 1984, this contemporary classic will feature Claire Chitham (Outrageous Fortune, Shortland Street), Theresa Healey (Dancing with the Stars) and former Neighbours star Stephen Lovatt taking to the stage for his Silo Theatre debut.
THE REAL THING, laced with acerbic humour and ironic paradoxes is destined to become the theatrical highlight of 2007.
“…The Real Thing reminds you why you go to the theatre and why you fall in love. And why, just sometimes, it is all worth the effort…” – Michael Billington, The Guardian
THE REAL THING plays
31st August – 29th September 2007
Monday and Tuesdays at 7pm. Wednesday – Saturday 8pm. No performances on Sundays.
Bookings through Ticketmaster on 09 970 9700 or www.ticketmaster.co.nz
Tickets: $20 – $35 (booking fees may apply)
CAST
Claire Chitham
Stephen Lovatt
Theresa Healey
Cameron Rhodes
Paul Ellis
Michelle Blundell
Brian Rankin
Theatre ,
Witty banter in self-indulgent comedy
Review by Kate Ward-Smythe 02nd Sep 2007
Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing was written in 1982 and makes widespread use of the “play within a play” format to explore love, honesty and fidelity in order to examine the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress and a passionate member of a committee to “free Brodie”, a Scottish soldier jailed for torching a war memorial. Henry is a playwright and regarded to be a substitute for Stoppard.
The Real Thing won Evening Standard Award for Best Play in 1982. While Stoppard’s clever wordplay might have been groundbreaking commentary on relationships among London artisans 25 years ago, watching director Shane Bosher’s interpretation, I feel little affinity with anyone’s journey in and out of love, as this most complex of emotions is intellectualized through philosophical debate, competition and wit; between four actors, a playwright, a petulant daughter and the true Brodie.
Yes, his linguistic complexity is fantastic and fun, but I left the Silo Theatre thinking while I’d heard a great deal about love, I hadn’t actually seen love holistically unfold, disarm and undo. I can see why this script was successful as a radio play.
Performance-wise, while there are isolated stand out moments, given the theme, I didn’t feel the ensemble were fully connected. I didn’t feel drawn in. In the cast’s defence, if Stoppard had scripted expressions of love between his characters using the same eternal poetry he uses to express his love of words and writing, perhaps real connections and relevance would’ve unfolded and I would’ve cared more.
Bosher’s creative team delivers polished design across the board. However, while it is all very neat and tidy, time-consuming and distracting resetting of inconsequential props between scenes does little to assist the flow of the night.
Our four main players – Stephen Lovatt, Cameron Rhodes, Teresa Healey and Claire Chitham – are all at ease and at their best delivering Stoppard’s witty banter. With expert pace and timing, Lovatt in particular relishes Stoppard’s definitive one-liners, such as dismissing opera as a “foreign musical with no dancing”.
While I belly laughed several times, and greatly admire Stoppard’s sublime ability with words, ultimately it is only words that he adorns with genuine care in The Real Thing. The result is a dated self-indulgent comedy. Good for a light laugh if you’re looking for an antidote to ATC’s potent, enduring and powerful black comedy, The Pillowman.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments
Oedipa Maas September 7th, 2007
[As previously posted in forum:] Sigh. As an audience member who has seen almost all Stoppard to be performed in the greater Auckland region in the past long-while-and-a-bit, it saddens me to read the reviews of Silo Theatre's recent production of his 'The Real Thing' both in the Herald and on this website. Both reviews seem to latently bemoan a certain verbosity in the play, claiming it alienates identification and obscures the 'showing' (not 'telling') of that ever elusive beast, love - a.k.a; 'The Real Thing'. It is precisely this verbosity in our central characters which 'unfolds, disarms and undoes' the human condition. To approach this play as merely (although masterful) farcical banter is not only a dis-service to the text, but a telling exposure of the ease in which our modern ears give up when approached with something difficult or unsettling. One does not need to view the play multiple times, nor do they need to have a degree in English Literature to be confronted with Stoppard's multi-level attack on the fight between legitimacy ('the real thing' perhaps?) and illegitimacy - fought on stage by high-brow and low-brow literature, classical and pop music, lofty love and its lesser cousin lust. A multifaceted, metatheatrical battle beautifully staged by Bosher and his ensemble. It seems Ms Huse's review almost implied that the integral soundscape of the play (painstakingly compiled pop songs, listed in the text) was merely a clever add-on, by the (still truly wonderful) sound engineer Jonathan Cross. As an experienced critic for our nation's largest newspaper, can it be true that even Ms Huse's ears really have switched off to the degree where she missed the absolute precision of their pre-existing choice? And completely failed to mention their cunning paralell to the already multi-faceted storyline? ...And instead chose to pick apart the fantastic Victoria Ingram's costume choices for being 'unflattering'? Wandering attentions, indeed. As a theatre-goer who enjoys being confronted by stagecraft, and finds her "light laughs" elsewhere, I find it almost insulting that this play was recommended as an "antidote" to the "potent, enduring and powerful black comedy, The Pillowman." Yes, Simon Prast's 'Pillowman' is brilliant, dark, engaging, powerful and a whole host of other adjectives - I was deeply moved by both the text and it's delivery. JUST as I was deeply and utterly moved by 'The Real Thing'"s potency, its parable on the dual impotence and power of both love and language. By its commentary on the futility AND necessity of these tools humans continue to wield and buckle underneath. Also, apart from fleeting references to Stephen Lovatt's protagonist as a surrogate Stoppard, both pieces failed to remark on the text's cutting commentary on the role of the author. Now THERE'S a proper reason to bring up comparison to McDonagh's 'The Pillowman'. Ladies. Open your ears. ...You're missing out.