Is Love Real?
By Franklin W. Liu                                 

     The winds of infidelity threaten to capsize two couples entangled in a storm of deceitful love is a Tony Award-winning play, “The Real Thing” by British playwright Tom Stoppard.
     This engrossing, 1980s drama of pain from marital head-games is currently presented by the Huntington Theatre Company.

      Playwright Tom Stoppard wrote this spousal betrayal passion play in 1982. It premiered that year in London. Two years later in 1984, it was presented with resounding success on Broadway.
     Mike Nichols directed the Broadway presentation, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons; the show won a slew of Tony Awards.
     The play’s pivotal character is Henry, a playwright. Some say Henry’s avocation, his cavalier persona and lifestyle mirror the playwright Stoppard. These personal shortcomings may have contributed to the demise of Stoppard’s own marriage, ending in divorce.
     Was the play autobiographical? Stoppard is mute on the question.    
To his amusement and fueling even more confusion, Stoppard has frequently given conflicting accounts to those writing on his personal life.  Perhaps, one can only write about mind-games if one knows how to play them.
        The two-act play is set in London during the 1980s.   
Stoppard’s playwriting brilliance was apparent in the opening scene’s meta-commentary on the work itself. Stage actions dive right into marital deceit, structured as a play within a play. The audience sees two actors: A man confronting his wife on her infidelity.
     It becomes clear to the audience in following scenes that Max and Charlotte are actually both married to someone else. Charlotte is married to Henry, the playwright. Max is married to Annie, an actress by trade.
     The two couples are close friends albeit with some secrets. When Henry and Annie are discovered to have an ongoing love affair; it broke up both marriages, leading Annie to move in with Henry.
     In this play-within-a-play scene, Charlotte (Meg Gibson) comes home
to Max (Mathew Boston) from a trip. Bursting through the door with presents, she prattling on and on, recounting with details on her trip to
Switzerland. She was scarcely paying attention to her dejected husband slouched on the couch as she babbles on.
     After a while, he could no longer tolerate it; suddenly Max interrupts Charlotte in mid-sentence with a statement: Charlotte, you forgot your passport.
     Max says, “You went to Switzerland without your passport. I found it in your chest drawer.”
     The audience snickered in response to seeing a lying, cheating spouse being caught.
      Still denying wrongdoing, Charlotte turns the table on Max. Arguments escalate. Her trips to Amsterdam were brought up as proof of a pattern of cheating. The scene dissolves to tune of a Righteous Brothers song: You lost that loving feeling…
     Rufus Collins gives an energetic performance as Henry, an egotistical playwright. But Collins’ performance suffers from being too one-sided. It lacks sufficient manifestation of Henry’s softer side. It would have shown the inherent sensitivity and the keen understanding of emotional nuances that are the hallmark setting all compelling writers apart from others. 
     Stoppard may have been drawing from his real life infusing Henry with an omniscient viewpoint. And as a writer, Henry also has the ability to conjure up fully fleshed out characters, bring them to life.
     It was easy for Henry to see himself as a god, thus thinking everything revolves around him. And that other people only have feelings that are ascribed to them by a writer, like Henry.
     In one scene, Annie, played superbly by Kate Nowlin, was incredulous that Henry confessed to having sex with her while she was asleep and totally
out of it. Jousting with him, she asks, “Why didn’t you wake me?”  Henry replies with glib, “I thought I’d try it without you talking.”
     Henry and Annie’s relationship was full of retorts laced with acerbic wit, each challenging the other on matters of love and on each other’s intellect.
     In Act II, a handsome, young actor decides to pursue Annie while they appear in a play together in Glasgow. This competition for Annie’s love riles and threatens Henry.
     Coming full circle, art imitates life once more—and again in a play within a play—the Glasgow production was titled: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.
     Jealousy consumes Henry, leading to a soulful outburst of love on demand. Badgering Annie yet pleading with her, Henry says “You don’t love me the same way I love you.”
     Nowlin’s portrayal of Annie was bright, sassy and licentious. Yet, her vulnerability surfaces as she was pursue by a virile young man almost young enough to be her son.    
     Ms. Evan Yionoulis leans on her directorial experience gained on Broadway and in regional theatres. She received an OBIE award for directing “Three Days of Rain” written in 1997 by American dramatist, Richard Greenberg (1958- ).
     She also chaired the Acting Department of Yale School of Drama from 1998-2003.  She is a resident director at the Yale Repertory Theatre.   
     Under Yionoulis’ skillful direction, stage action was lively and the ensemble acting was smooth.
Stoppard’s play succeeds in winding us through a literary clockwork of illicit love and its emotional pendulum. It does not preach, leaving it up to the audience to calibrate what is sham from what is real.
     “The Real Thing” is an evening of intelligent theatre; it sings with linguistic dexterity. Attending this play will be time well spent.
     Performances run through October 9, at the Boston University Theatre. For information call 617 266-0800.