Review: THE REAL THING Is the Real Deal at Katonah Classic Stage

If you’re a theater company hankering to stage a Tom Stoppard play, you best be up to that formidable task. The late master dramatist’s oeuvre is synonymous with a nonpareil dexterity of language, a singular skill that he puts in the employ of deep-thought musings on the human condition. 

The good news is that with its production of The Real Thing, Katonah Classic Stage, under the exacting standards set by its braintrust – Artistic Director Trent Dawson and Executive Director Sharron Kearney – is certainly up to the task of finding the music in Mr. Stoppard’s verbal symphony of ideas and ingenuity. (‘Tis a pity the brilliant maestro left us a scant 11 months ago, age 88, but his work is justly immortal.) 

The play’s title reflects its obsession with our ever-shifting perceptions of each other, with the “other” in this case primarily romantic partnerships. Even the effective and efficient scenic design (Sharron Kearney) skirts the line between reality and artifice. The same flats and furniture are re-positioned from scene to scene to look familiar yet different. That helps blur our clarity of vision ever so slightly but enough to keep us on our toes figuring “Which version of reality – or not – is this now?” 

Anchoring this classy, sassy production is the wonderfully nuanced and wily portrayal by Mr. Dawson of central character Henry. In the mix-and-match cast of characters orchestrated by our mischievous playwright, Henry is a Stoppard-like artist of protean talent, with an ego that just won’t stop. Henry’s typical conversation with whomever is not unlike a recurring duet of “Anything you can say I can say better. I can say (or write) anything better than you.” 

If that sounds like it could get a tad tiresome for anyone within Henry’s orbit, that’s part of the playwright’s point, but rest assured that’s not the case for the audience, thanks in large part to Mr. Dawson’s silky charm and masterly delivery. The American actor’s imperious yet dulcet British intonations are flawless. 

The entire cast is praiseworthy for their unyielding commitment to character and controlled physicality, for which director Jonathan Fielding can take his own well-deserved bow. At first, when we meet Henry, he’s married to tart-tongued Charlotte (the Kate Hepburn-like Brenda Withers), an actor who gives as good as she gets. She’s appearing in Henry’s play “House of Cards” with a somewhat shlubby actor named Max (convincingly captured by Jeremiah Wiggins), who seemingly married up, to sensuous, insatiable Annie (a very strong, smooth performance by Katie Fabel), also an actor. (Just for giggles, the characters in “Cards” are named the same as the actors playing them, Max and Charlotte.)

Got that? Good, but fasten your seat belts, because just as we’re learning who’s who in this revolving door of dramatis personae, Charlotte is out Henry’s door, and in comes Annie. 

The alternation of the actors’ unscripted lives with their delivery of scripted lines authored by Henry is what keeps the earth shifting beneath them. 

Armed with these tantalizing set pieces peopling his chess board, Mr. Stoppard goes to town as only he could. 

In Stoppard’s world, it seems everybody – by which that means the whole world – is forever looking for a way out of their binding relationships, except for the times they are looking for a way in. One of my favorite exchanges is also arguably the most elegant in how it pithily echoes the entire subtext of “The Real Thing.” In Henry’s play “House of Cards,” when Max suspects Charlotte has a lover, he inquires, “Is it anyone I know?” to which she shoots back drily, “You’re not anyone I know.” And so it goes. 

Annie becomes smitten with a sketchy, performative revolutionary named Brodie (kudos to Cian Genaro, who has a brief but resonating encounter with Henry and Annie at play’s end). Also impressively making the most of a supporting role is Jay Edward Clarke as Billy, a young hustler of an actor who has the hots for Annie, and she, of course, returns the favor.  Representing the younger generation is Henry and Charlotte’s daughter Debbie (an excellent Abby Buris), who memorably schools her parents that having monogamous rights to someone “isn’t love, it’s colonization.” Pure Stoppard. As is Henry’s remark that “What free love is free of, is love.”

No doubt Henry, armed with his outrageous slings and arrows aimed at whomever is nearest him in any given moment, is the provocateur-in-chief. And we are the voyeurs-en-masse. He (aka Stoppard) is forever in quest of support for his thesis, “Do we control our feelings or do they control us? Are they real or manufactured? Is the unquenchable desire to need someone strength or weakness?”  

For all his smug bravado, though, Henry’s a softie under the crust: “I love love,” says he. “I love having a lover and being one.”

Is “The Real Thing” a polemic on politics? A treatise on talent? A rumination on romance? A riff on reality?
The answer is it wouldn’t be Stoppard unless it was all that and more.

And just for good measure, I leave you with another of Henry’s (that is, Mr. Stoppard’s) bon mots on this life: “It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic.” 

With its production of “The Real Thing,” when it comes to high-stakes, serious Stage Entertainment close to home, Katonah Classic Stage proves it is the real deal.  

CREDITS
Production Stage Manager: Bethany Sortman.
Lighting Design: Michael Rathbun.
Co-Lighting Design: Ava Zuckerman.
Costume Design: April Hahn.
Sound Design: Joshua Kaine Boniello.
Scenic Design: Sharon Kearney.
Assistant Stage Manager: Molly Emmens.
2nd Assistant Stage Manager: Catherine Saraceno.
Carpenter: Chris Gillespie. 

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Upcoming Shows

The Real Thing

10/22 - 11/1/2026