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"The Real Thing" Searches for True Love and True Theater, In Clever Tom Stoppard Classic Playing at Theatre Intime

Donald Gilpin

Early in the second act of The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard's 1982 drama about love, writing and theater, Henry, a playwright, and his lover Annie, an actress, are battling over the merits of a script she has brought him. Henry, explaining the difference between language that soars and language that sinks, brings out his cricket bat to help describe "the real thing."

"If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock ... What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel. (He clucks his tongue and picks up the script.) Now what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting "Ouch!'"

After twenty years, The Real Thing still possesses those qualities of the well-made cricket bat. Mr. Stoppard is one of the great playwrights of the past half century – in the tradition of Shaw in his use of wit and social commentary, Ionesco in his understanding of the absurdities and incongruities of the modern world, and Pirandello in his attention to the theatricality of life and the thin line between reality and make-believe. Theatergoers will have their own particular favorites, but The Real Thing certainly takes its place, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1968), Jumpers (1972) and Arcadia (1993), among his finest creations. It won the 1984 Tony Award for Best Play, with Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, and Christine Baranski in the leading roles and Mike Nichols directing.

The Real Thing is an elegant cricket bat, full of stimulating ideas, rich and witty language, and a generous dose of heart and soul. The "real thing" is the creative act of getting the words right, and it is also the struggle to find and hold on to true love. Theatre Intime's production, however, to pursue Henry's analogy, is still "a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat."

Under the direction of junior Greg Taubman, the Intime undergraduate ensemble of seven has taken on a significant challenge: in the verbal and intellectual complexity of Stoppard's language, in the characterization of the four principals embroiled in the marital deceptions and dilemmas of 30- and 40-year-olds, in the sophistication of the multi-layered plot, and in the staging of twelve scenes stretched over two acts. The greatest problems, somewhat overcome as Annie (Bridget Reilly Durkin) and Henry (Ben Mains) became the focal point of the action towards the end of the first act, were lapses in diction. The rapid, dazzling dialogue did not always come across clearly to the audience. The English and Scottish accents, delivered with some inconsistencies, made audience attention and understanding even more problematic. In its focus on language The Real Thing, perhaps even more than the average highly literate Stoppard play, is full of verbal wit, literary allusions, and elaborate word play. It requires the assiduous attention of its audiences, and the actors need to project that language with clarity and energy.

The Real Thing is the story of playwrights and actors. It is also the story of relationships and infidelities. The play opens with Max (Chris Arp) and Charlotte (Amy Widdowson) performing a scene from a play written by Henry, Charlotte's husband. In the scene Max's character accuses his wife of cheating on him. Later in the first act, Max discovers that his actual wife Annie has cheated on him with Henry. The end of the act finds Annie and Henry in love and living together.

In the second act, two years later, Henry and Annie are still together, but strains are showing. Henry struggles with his playwriting and is reduced to screenwriting. Annie finds herself attracted to a young co-star (Arthur Dudney), and takes up the cause of a rough-hewn radical (Jon Miller) who has written a play. Henry's 17-year-old, sexually liberated daughter (Kassi Jackson) contributes to Henry's confusion and to the often brilliant and hilarious dialogue on love and sex.

Mr. Mains and Ms. Durkin present a convincing, articulate, and engaging couple, as they battle with words, sexuality, and romance throughout the play. They succeed, for the most part, in accomplishing the 10-20-year stretch in age and in communicating both the daunting linguistic gymnastics and the complexities of their mutual affection. The unit set by Susie Cramer-Greenbaum creates a living room with checkerboard black, white and gray panels. Several panels are made of scrim material that is illuminated from behind to reveal works of art and to signify a change of locale – a worthy idea, though not always thoroughly credible or satisfying, in portraying seven different locations over the course of twelve scenes.

Music plays an important role in The Real Thing, as Henry's low-brow tastes in oldies rock music – Everly Brothers, Brenda Lee, Herman's Hermits, the Righteous Brothers and Procul Harum – provide the background ambience for many scenes and clash with Annie's classical tastes: Bach, Beethoven, Strauss.

After delivering his extended act two metaphor of the cricket bat, Henry, Mr. Stoppard's mouthpiece in the play, talks about the writer's craft: "I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead." Stoppard and Theatre Intime have most of the right words in the right order. Conveying those sacred words clearly and dynamically to the audience is the challenge for the Theatre Intime company in its upcoming final weekend.

The Real Thing plays November 11-12 at 8 p.m. and November 13 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., at the Hamilton Murray Theater. Call (609) 258-1742 for tickets or order online at www.princeton.edu/utickets.