8 / 10
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.
7 / 10
The longer it goes on, the more this production finds a plangent tone where the witty, the wise and the wounded are forever colliding. “No, it was about self-knowledge through pain,” the humbled Henry chides when his equally outspoken daughter accuses him of having written just another story of jiggery-pokery among the architect classes. Here, as elsewhere in this invigorating evening, many a true word is spoken in jest.
See what the critics are saying about The Real Thing at The Old Vic! Read the reviews and learn more about the production.
Hard going with characters largely bereft of sympathetic virtues, delivering dialogue long on ideas, but short on heart
| 1984 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 2000 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2010 | West End |
Old Vic Production West End |
| 2014 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Production Broadway |
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