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The Real Thing
The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage written by her husband Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?
The Real Thing was first performed at the Strand Theatre, London, on 16 November 1982.
The Real Thing was first performed at the Strand Theatre, London, on 16 November 1982.
81 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Tom Stoppard
121 books966 followersSir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.
Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.
He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.
Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.
He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 246 reviews
September 23, 2019
What does “The Real Thing” mean to you?
This is a play-within-a-play and slightly confusing for the reader. Which parts are the “play” and which reflect the real lives of the characters? I think that seeing it performed on stage will make that clearer.
The opening scene shows Max building a house of cards, which promptly crumples to the floor when a door is opened. Quite apt as the play is about relationships. The building and demolition of them.
Love, infidelity and all the bits in between are the focus of the interactions between these two couples. Who’s in love with whom, and how do you define love anyway? Is there are a one-size-fits all definition of it.
The dialogue is clever and has some great one liners. Perhaps slightly dated now (as it was written in 1982), but there’s no doubt this was written by a very astute & clever playwright, acerbic and witty.
MAX: “It’s those little touches that lift adultery out of the moral arena and make it a matter of style.”
CHARLOTTE: “It’s like when we were burgled. The same violation. Worse.”
MAX: “I’m not a burglar. I’m your husband.”
CHARLOTTE: “As I said. Worse.”
This is a play that’s always stuck in my mind. So reading it was interesting, having seen it many moons ago (yes, in the 1980s!). It’s where I fell in awe with John Bell*. I’m about to see a new production of it on stage next weekend, which is why I was keen to read it beforehand. To see if it matched up to what I recalled of it.
To my mind, actors can only give great performances when they have great words to bring to life. Without the words there is no play, and Tom Stoppard definitely delivers the words.
* John Bell – an Aussie acting icon of supreme talent. Founder of “The Bell Shakespeare Company”.
May 29, 2020
Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye’s version of “Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing, Baby”:
https://www.youtube.com/results?searc...
A play I saw in the eighties when I saw a lot of Stoppard plays, one of his most popular ones, about the difference between reality and appearance, about true love and lust, between passionate commitment and affection.
The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress who is trying to free Brodie, an activist (Henry, his main character, and Stoppard, were skeptical of Marxism and political theater, which I am not, but I still liked the play). The play uses various strategies to accomplish its exploration, including a play within a play. It’s layered and complex and clever; for instance, Annie is married to Max, having an affair with Henry while also working as an activist for Brodie. They all SAY they are in love to each other but seem to be having affairs with other people they say the same things to. . . then you who are seeing it on stage see them as actors saying this to other people and (almost) convincing us they are being honest. Language and writing are key elements of analysis.
“Words, words, words,” from My Fair Lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWAdT...
The play has autobiographical elements, as Stoppard was having an affair with a woman who played one of the characters the main character (modeled after himself) was having an affair with. It must have been confusing for him. But the play is witty and clever and interesting. I really liked reading it.
https://www.youtube.com/results?searc...
A play I saw in the eighties when I saw a lot of Stoppard plays, one of his most popular ones, about the difference between reality and appearance, about true love and lust, between passionate commitment and affection.
The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress who is trying to free Brodie, an activist (Henry, his main character, and Stoppard, were skeptical of Marxism and political theater, which I am not, but I still liked the play). The play uses various strategies to accomplish its exploration, including a play within a play. It’s layered and complex and clever; for instance, Annie is married to Max, having an affair with Henry while also working as an activist for Brodie. They all SAY they are in love to each other but seem to be having affairs with other people they say the same things to. . . then you who are seeing it on stage see them as actors saying this to other people and (almost) convincing us they are being honest. Language and writing are key elements of analysis.
“Words, words, words,” from My Fair Lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWAdT...
The play has autobiographical elements, as Stoppard was having an affair with a woman who played one of the characters the main character (modeled after himself) was having an affair with. It must have been confusing for him. But the play is witty and clever and interesting. I really liked reading it.
July 5, 2016
I think this play has one of the best lines about enduring love and enduring through love. Even though the characters and incredibly flawed, I appreciated their vulnerability and desire to stay together despite the fact that their relationship was getting difficult. Stoppard does a great job portraying two characters who don't want to stay together because of a buildup of tension and yet who still feel compelled to remain. It's not a simplistic portrayal either. The two characters are not so devoted to love and marriage that they seem naive and idealistic about love and marriage; in fact, if anything they seem jaded about the whole idea--their last marriages ended because of their affair and there is no real indication that they plan on this relationship lasting longer than it takes for the norepinephrine to dry up. But somehow--and they are surprised by this--they want to stay together despite all this. While watching and later reading the play, I kept trying to figure out how Stoppard portrayed the conflicting emotions so seamlessly. Stoppard is a genius, though, so I still don't know how he did it but I'm glad I can appreciate and enjoy his work both on the stage and in print.
A word about the understandability of this play: In his work Stoppard is often engaged in metaphysics, chaos theory, erudite history, and loads of other obscure and hard to understand devices--that's part of his charm and intrigue. Perhaps this play has such devices too and I missed it, but I found this play to be very accessible without sacrificing depth.
A word about the understandability of this play: In his work Stoppard is often engaged in metaphysics, chaos theory, erudite history, and loads of other obscure and hard to understand devices--that's part of his charm and intrigue. Perhaps this play has such devices too and I missed it, but I found this play to be very accessible without sacrificing depth.
December 10, 2023
”Loving and being loved is unliterary. It’s happiness expressed in banality and lust.”
A play about love and infidelity? Yes, that seems banal and boring. But this is Stoppard, so of course it’s not that simple. He adds depth, diversions, flourishes of many varieties, and as he writes:
”It’s those little touches that lift adultery out of the moral arena and make it a matter of style!”
Because like every Stoppard play, no matter its subject, The Real Thing is about language cleverly use to delight us, trick us, deceive us, befuddle, bemuse, and bewitch us. It’s about using and misusing words as we weave them into spells to deceive ourselves or others.
”Don’t get too good at that.”
“What?”
“Persuasive nonsense. Sophistry in a phrase so neat you can’t see the loose end that would unravel it. It’s flawless, but wrong — a perfect dud. You can do that with words, bless ‘em.”
Ultimately, the meaning of Love and the power of Words get equal treatment here, as one seamlessly blends into the other under Stoppard’s wizardry —
”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.”
Love, adultery, theater, language, philosophy, highbrow/lowbrow culture, and words, brilliant words, words, words! So yeah, just another Tom Stoppard play.
A play about love and infidelity? Yes, that seems banal and boring. But this is Stoppard, so of course it’s not that simple. He adds depth, diversions, flourishes of many varieties, and as he writes:
”It’s those little touches that lift adultery out of the moral arena and make it a matter of style!”
Because like every Stoppard play, no matter its subject, The Real Thing is about language cleverly use to delight us, trick us, deceive us, befuddle, bemuse, and bewitch us. It’s about using and misusing words as we weave them into spells to deceive ourselves or others.
”Don’t get too good at that.”
“What?”
“Persuasive nonsense. Sophistry in a phrase so neat you can’t see the loose end that would unravel it. It’s flawless, but wrong — a perfect dud. You can do that with words, bless ‘em.”
Ultimately, the meaning of Love and the power of Words get equal treatment here, as one seamlessly blends into the other under Stoppard’s wizardry —
”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.”
Love, adultery, theater, language, philosophy, highbrow/lowbrow culture, and words, brilliant words, words, words! So yeah, just another Tom Stoppard play.
November 25, 2015
Don't be fooled by the title; this isn't a play about Coke or Faith No More's best album (you watch; I'll get an argument on that last one) but rather a searching character piece about LOVE.
To be more specific, it explores the nature of love and how it means different things to different people. It includes betrayal, devotion, sex, parental love and that old favourite, unrequited love.
It also includes a brief exploration of highbrow and lowbrow art which, I suspect, is meant to draw a parallel with the nature of love... but, Hell, what do I know? My English Literature A Level was over twenty years ago now.
This is Tom Stoppard so you're guaranteed that it's going to be very clever and very funny. I laughed out loud a few times and listening to this play on my drive home was a great way to wash away the working week. Highly recommended.
To be more specific, it explores the nature of love and how it means different things to different people. It includes betrayal, devotion, sex, parental love and that old favourite, unrequited love.
It also includes a brief exploration of highbrow and lowbrow art which, I suspect, is meant to draw a parallel with the nature of love... but, Hell, what do I know? My English Literature A Level was over twenty years ago now.
This is Tom Stoppard so you're guaranteed that it's going to be very clever and very funny. I laughed out loud a few times and listening to this play on my drive home was a great way to wash away the working week. Highly recommended.
January 6, 2019
смешно, грустно, остроумно, пронзительно — короче, всё, чего мы и ждали от Стоппарда. как «Розенкранц и Гильденстерн» — про смерть, так Real Thing — про любовь. много очень точных и душевырывательных наблюдений, несносно симпатичные персонажи, и всё это — с весьма британским юмором.
хотела выписать какие-нибудь особо понравившиеся цитаты, но эдак пришлось бы взять полпьесы. в общем, очень круто.
хотела выписать какие-нибудь особо понравившиеся цитаты, но эдак пришлось бы взять полпьесы. в общем, очень круто.
December 18, 2015
December of Drama 2015, day seventeen
"If you want a lover,
I'll do anything you ask me to.
And if you want another kind of love,
I'll wear a mask for you."
--I'm Your Man, by Leonard Cohen
There are some who would call this "a fine play," and it is. There are others who will call it "a clever play," and it's that, too. But it's not just fine, nor merely clever. In fact there's a point where anybody watching (or reading) it may ask themselves whether what it's doing is anything more than cleverness... well, absolutely, it's more than that. The structure may be the most salient aspect (each subsequent scene being 'nested' in the previous one, and also seeming like its opposite) but the wit and the verbal acrobatics are what impressed me most. Sure it's essentially about love and marriage and relationships, but it's also about truth, and writing about truth, about experience and the depiction of experiences. Here's one memorable little passage:
"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."
Right? This is a great play for readers, writers, and lovers. So, just about everybody, then. I think I only withheld a five-star rating because I feel like I ought to be stingier with those. Great but not stop-your-heart amazing.
"If you want a lover,
I'll do anything you ask me to.
And if you want another kind of love,
I'll wear a mask for you."
--I'm Your Man, by Leonard Cohen
There are some who would call this "a fine play," and it is. There are others who will call it "a clever play," and it's that, too. But it's not just fine, nor merely clever. In fact there's a point where anybody watching (or reading) it may ask themselves whether what it's doing is anything more than cleverness... well, absolutely, it's more than that. The structure may be the most salient aspect (each subsequent scene being 'nested' in the previous one, and also seeming like its opposite) but the wit and the verbal acrobatics are what impressed me most. Sure it's essentially about love and marriage and relationships, but it's also about truth, and writing about truth, about experience and the depiction of experiences. Here's one memorable little passage:
"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."
Right? This is a great play for readers, writers, and lovers. So, just about everybody, then. I think I only withheld a five-star rating because I feel like I ought to be stingier with those. Great but not stop-your-heart amazing.
January 9, 2022
4.5, rounded down.
A few days ago was the 38th anniversary of when this play opened in NY, and one of my theatre blogs did a tribute to it - which is what impelled this reread; I don't think I've ever seen it staged. It's one of the more accessible and lightweight of Stoppard's plays, but it does get bogged down every now and then with some pedantic, heavy dialogue which rings just a tad ... artificial (the first scene of the second act in particular). But there are many clever lines, as well as genuine LOL ones.
I think even more interesting than the play itself, is the various internecine relationships that developed with sundry people involved, considering it IS about infidelity in marriage and with relationships in general. Felicity Kendal, who originated the role of Annie, left her second marriage for Stoppard a dozen years after doing the play - and then reunited with her husband 7 years later when their affair ended. After THAT, Stoppard had a long relationship with Sinéad Cusack, the wife of Jeremy Irons, who originated the role of Henry in the NY production. During which, he allegedly had a long affair with his costar, Glenn Close - and although they've both denied it, they did go on to make two movies together. Anyway ...
A few days ago was the 38th anniversary of when this play opened in NY, and one of my theatre blogs did a tribute to it - which is what impelled this reread; I don't think I've ever seen it staged. It's one of the more accessible and lightweight of Stoppard's plays, but it does get bogged down every now and then with some pedantic, heavy dialogue which rings just a tad ... artificial (the first scene of the second act in particular). But there are many clever lines, as well as genuine LOL ones.
I think even more interesting than the play itself, is the various internecine relationships that developed with sundry people involved, considering it IS about infidelity in marriage and with relationships in general. Felicity Kendal, who originated the role of Annie, left her second marriage for Stoppard a dozen years after doing the play - and then reunited with her husband 7 years later when their affair ended. After THAT, Stoppard had a long relationship with Sinéad Cusack, the wife of Jeremy Irons, who originated the role of Henry in the NY production. During which, he allegedly had a long affair with his costar, Glenn Close - and although they've both denied it, they did go on to make two movies together. Anyway ...
October 9, 2021
The energy in this LATW production made the comedy sharp. I enjoyed it so much that I listened to it 3 times, once before reading Tom Stoppard: A Life and twice after it before returning this to Libby. What was amazing is that I was laughing each time – and also how each time I registered deeper story layers.
Maybe it helped me to read Tom Stoppard: A Life, it had a chapter covering this play’s creative process to production to reception including interpretation. The last time I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I saw traces of Samuel Beckett or Theatre of the Absurd, it was a confidence booster when Hermione Lee’s bio confirmed this. This play also has traces of this absurdity, though better hidden by the very clever use of language and word play. It’s this that makes it more than another love story, the cleverness plays like a thought experiment that explores how to recognise real love.
This play is in two acts where the characters that drive the action are writers or actors. As I listened to this it would become clear why. Its structure is a web of confusion and disorientation. In my first listening I was not clear who was in a relationship with whom as these would change alongside romantic scenes being played out in rehearsals. I realised this was the point of the play, as the play muddles its real life with its rehearsed space and The Real Thing is about more than real love or finding the one, as the play stetches out to ask what is real itself without providing an answer. I didn’t mind this or all the confusion the play was throwing up, in fact I was enjoying it as I like the play-in-a-play-premise, where here it was also the comedy, or rather the irony, that kept me engaged knowing I’d want to listen to this again.
Maybe it helped me to read Tom Stoppard: A Life, it had a chapter covering this play’s creative process to production to reception including interpretation. The last time I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I saw traces of Samuel Beckett or Theatre of the Absurd, it was a confidence booster when Hermione Lee’s bio confirmed this. This play also has traces of this absurdity, though better hidden by the very clever use of language and word play. It’s this that makes it more than another love story, the cleverness plays like a thought experiment that explores how to recognise real love.
This play is in two acts where the characters that drive the action are writers or actors. As I listened to this it would become clear why. Its structure is a web of confusion and disorientation. In my first listening I was not clear who was in a relationship with whom as these would change alongside romantic scenes being played out in rehearsals. I realised this was the point of the play, as the play muddles its real life with its rehearsed space and The Real Thing is about more than real love or finding the one, as the play stetches out to ask what is real itself without providing an answer. I didn’t mind this or all the confusion the play was throwing up, in fact I was enjoying it as I like the play-in-a-play-premise, where here it was also the comedy, or rather the irony, that kept me engaged knowing I’d want to listen to this again.
May 25, 2016
It’s not too hard a thing, to start reading plays. I’m glad it seems I’m able to start to read on my own a bit.
Stoppard. I hesitate to say I like any given author. It’s the work, you see, that is more interesting. Authors can be fallible. They can create a masterpiece like EoE and then have…the rest. I thin I really want to say that I enjoy Stoppard. R&G? Quite innovative, funny, light and at the same time dark; cynical while optimistic. Arcadia, of course. I gush about it.
So where does the real thing fit in? I thought that I would like it. I mean, I could feel myself wanting to. Internally lauding the theatrical devices employed etc. Noticed the witty dialouge. Laughed aloud atimes – only Stoppard really does that to me. And I dont’ think this play has had me turn away from Stoppard. I am not disappointed, really. Well maybe a little, but only because I had such high expectations to begin with.
The Real Thing is…about love? I…honestly feel like I didn’t fully understand it. Or, only kind of did. The individual monologues, scenes – even the reflections mirrors from a scene to the next (or one two scenes later) – these all liked me well. The larger picture, the content of it, that is – there I got lost. It’s not even that it’s not worth reading or anything. I’m just left mildly puzzled, slightly offput by my lack of thorough enjoyment. So 3 stars – I liked it. I guess.
But as briefly mentioned, Stoppard as funny and intellectual and himself as can be, I think – and though I have a collection of 5 plays of his in a book here, I am too cautious to read them all at once, lest one blend into the next (as with Ibesn, or even O’Neill to me). I will continue, then, warily, in my supposed enjoyment of, optimism for, the playwright…
Stoppard. I hesitate to say I like any given author. It’s the work, you see, that is more interesting. Authors can be fallible. They can create a masterpiece like EoE and then have…the rest. I thin I really want to say that I enjoy Stoppard. R&G? Quite innovative, funny, light and at the same time dark; cynical while optimistic. Arcadia, of course. I gush about it.
So where does the real thing fit in? I thought that I would like it. I mean, I could feel myself wanting to. Internally lauding the theatrical devices employed etc. Noticed the witty dialouge. Laughed aloud atimes – only Stoppard really does that to me. And I dont’ think this play has had me turn away from Stoppard. I am not disappointed, really. Well maybe a little, but only because I had such high expectations to begin with.
The Real Thing is…about love? I…honestly feel like I didn’t fully understand it. Or, only kind of did. The individual monologues, scenes – even the reflections mirrors from a scene to the next (or one two scenes later) – these all liked me well. The larger picture, the content of it, that is – there I got lost. It’s not even that it’s not worth reading or anything. I’m just left mildly puzzled, slightly offput by my lack of thorough enjoyment. So 3 stars – I liked it. I guess.
But as briefly mentioned, Stoppard as funny and intellectual and himself as can be, I think – and though I have a collection of 5 plays of his in a book here, I am too cautious to read them all at once, lest one blend into the next (as with Ibesn, or even O’Neill to me). I will continue, then, warily, in my supposed enjoyment of, optimism for, the playwright…
November 13, 2015
A play that concerns love, lust, honesty, writing - what more could I want?
Soundtrack:
Hot Violins - Joe Venuti, Eddie South, Clifford Hayes, Emilio Cacares, Stuff Smith, et. al.
Ornette Coleman: Virgin Beauty
Mingus Plays Piano
J.S. Bach: Cello Suites - Anner Bylsma (1992)
This probably sounds as pretentious as Henry's Desert Island Discs in the play, but we all are what we are.
Soundtrack:
Hot Violins - Joe Venuti, Eddie South, Clifford Hayes, Emilio Cacares, Stuff Smith, et. al.
Ornette Coleman: Virgin Beauty
Mingus Plays Piano
J.S. Bach: Cello Suites - Anner Bylsma (1992)
This probably sounds as pretentious as Henry's Desert Island Discs in the play, but we all are what we are.
December 16, 2022
*Cue the intro music: Eric Coates "By the Sleepy Lagoon"
Roy Plomley (RP): This week our castaway is the distinguished playwright, Henry Cocktostoy. Henry we are dumping you on this island in complete isolation, could you adjust to the loneliness?
Henry Cocktostoy (HC): I don't have to adjust to loneliness in a sense because I like being on my own sometimes, and the women in my life often leave me on my own. It's the result of marrying actresses, I imagine, and of being a writer. It's a lonely pursuit.
RP: What about the consolation of music? How would that be?
HC: Music has never really been in the foreground of my life. I played the triangle in Darjeeling in 1944 and that is about it.
RP: You've chosen only seven discs for your time on the island, rather than the conventional eight. What is your first?
HC: Well it has to be Ode to Joy, obviously, does it not?
RP: Why is that Henry?
HC: It is, of course, the most important work of Butterworth, and very popular amongst your guests, I know.
RP: Don't you mean Beethoven? Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven?
HC: Beethoven, Butterworth. They do both begin with the letter B. It's all the same is it not?
RP: Quite. Here is Ode to Joy, by Ludwig van Butterworth.
Cue Music: Ode to Joy, Ludwig van Beethoven
RP: Were you an only child? Do you remember your time in Singapore?
HC: My first proper school was a convent in Darjeeling, and I had a some brothers and half-sisters.
RP: A slight muddle of languages?
HC: Yes. I came to England and thought I spoke English, it was my first language, but it was English by way of Darjeeling and Singapore and other stops, and I realized that my English was not the English of England, and that may have led to my precision with language.
RP: And somewhere along the way you ended up in Bristol. We have a Bristol record here on your list. Should we pause now to play that?
HC: I suppose it is not so much a proper disc as it is a theme that means the universe to so many of us, in the trashiest possible sense of meaning, and the composer, I can't remember his name but I can see his silly hairline and curly do, and I can still hear his ridiculous Australian accent, he's not really from Bristol, but I suppose he is as accurately claimed by Bristol as the Canadians claim the Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and ... well ... yes. We can play that disc now.
Cue Music: Theme from "Doctor Who," composed by Ron Grainer
RP: That was the "Doctor Who" theme by Ron Grainer. You homed in on the theatre, Henry. Why?
HC: Bristol was quite a small place, but it did have many excellent theatres, amongst them the Old Vic, and I was working as a critic at the time and I gravitated towards those theatres and the theatre folk. Shortly after that I wrote my first play. I was still working as a critic at the time, and a fellow critic came back holding a picture of four young men, and he said he'd "seen the future," and they were wearing these strange cuts, like bowls on their heads, and I was fascinated.
RP: Should we share your next disc now?
HC: Yes. Why not?
Cue Music: Daydream Believer, performed by the Monkees, written by Neil Diamond
RP: That was the Monkees, "Daydream Believer," interestingly enough that was written and composed by Neil Diamond. And so at that time you started writing plays in earnest.
HC: Yes. Yes, so, (lights cigarette, takes a drag, exhales) my first play was staged on television, rather than on the stage; of course, that was after a number of radio plays. And then I started writing a show, a sort of short serial, about a young Darjeeling Doctor, and it was translated, I discovered, into Bengali, and it became quite a hit in India, and that was why was able to keep writing it, although I didn't realize that until much later.
RP: Shall we share your next disc? From an old friend of yours.
HC: Ah yes. Please do.
Cue Music: Send in the Clowns, by Stephen Sondheim.
RP: That was Send in the Clowns from Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music."
HC: And you know, Roy, the funniest thing was that Stephen new I hated clowns. I had a terrible experience with a clown in Singapore, and he loved to tease me at cast parties and tell me that "Send in the Clowns" was written with me in mind.
RP: That is something, Henry, to be the inspiration for a Sondheim classic.
HC: I suppose. If practical jokes can be taken as honoring.
RP: Let us have record number five.
HC: Oh must we? I know we must. So when Annie was cast in "'Tis Pity she's a Whore. ..."
RP: Annie is your wife?
HC: Still. Shockingly. Yet when she was cast in "'Tis Pity she's a Whore," my heart was taken back to my first marriage with Charlotte and a song, I should be ashamed to say, I love.
RP: Your fifth disc?
HC: Exactly.
Cue Music: "You've Lost that Loving Feeling," The Righteous Brothers.
RP: The Righteous Brothers sing "You've Lost that Loving Feeling."
HC: I would have sworn I loved that while eating milk chocolate on a lake, but it is hard to keep things such as that straight. But there is something about those two black men harmonizing a love song that has long given me shivers, let's say.
RP: The Righteous Brothers, however, are a pair of white singers from Orange County, California.
HC: (laughing hearlity) And I am sure you're going to tell me that Andre Previn was the same age as Mia Farrow.
RP: Now why would I do that?
HC: I had a dream about that Righteous Brothers song in my flat in London when I first came to the West End, and it was revelatory.
RP: I believe Woody Allen said the same thing about Mr. Previn.
HC: We're entering into a world of infinite regresses, mirrors face each other, and the playwright is vaguely ashamed of his taste, though I am not.
RP: Oh, of course. Hmm ... it's time we got back to the music, and I believe we are on disc six.
HC: This is, at least I imagine it is, a tropical island.
RP: Oh, yes, yes, of course it is.
HC: My daughter, Debbie, would never forgive me then, if I didn't abase myself with my admission of a love for Elvis and his Hawaii inspired work.
RP: Debbie is short for Deborah, obviously?
HC: No. Just Debbie. That was the name Charlotte chose. Just Debbie.
RP: Strange that. Do you call her Deb.
HC: No. I continue to call her by her name, Debbie, but she does refuse to call me "Fa" and prefers, now, to call me Henry.
RP: Poor you.
Cue Music: "Can't Help Falling in Love," by Elvis.
RP (cont'd): That was Elvis singing "Can't Help Falling in Love" from Blue Hawaii. You have only one disc left, Henry. Where do you see that disc falling in your life?
HC: It is connected, interestingly enough, with Jean-Paul Sartre.
RP: Sartre? The existentialist?
HC: Exactly. It seems that when I was telling Monsieur Sarte that he was, essentially, superficial, the pair of us were listening to and loving the same disc.
RP: Shall we play that disc, Henry?
HC: By all means.
Cue Music: "Da Doo Ron Ron," by The Crystals.
RP: The Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron." A philosophical choice, I venture.
HC: Do you, Roy? I thought it daft, but I will hand it to you; you are good at your job. Put the guest at ease, pretned you don't judge their choices. Well done you. And, of course, ignore your guests jibes.
RP: Penultimate question, Henry. Would you try to escape your island?
HC: HA! Absolutely not. Death by water is worse than death by sand and sun.
RP: And so we end with your book. What would that be?
HC: As a playwright, a poet, a one time novelist, this answer must be transcendent.
RP: It rarely is.
HC: I thought of the Bible, the Quran, other works of spiritual brilliance ,,,
RP: Yes, Henry.
HC: But I am going to be crazy and choose Watership Down in both English and Swahili.
RP: And your luxury item?
HC: An endless supply of Irish Breakfast Tea.
RP: And there you have it.
HC: Thank you, Roy.
RP: Thank you, Henry.
*loosely adapted (and partially plagiarized) from Tom Stoppard's appearance on Desert Island Discs, January 1985.
Roy Plomley (RP): This week our castaway is the distinguished playwright, Henry Cocktostoy. Henry we are dumping you on this island in complete isolation, could you adjust to the loneliness?
Henry Cocktostoy (HC): I don't have to adjust to loneliness in a sense because I like being on my own sometimes, and the women in my life often leave me on my own. It's the result of marrying actresses, I imagine, and of being a writer. It's a lonely pursuit.
RP: What about the consolation of music? How would that be?
HC: Music has never really been in the foreground of my life. I played the triangle in Darjeeling in 1944 and that is about it.
RP: You've chosen only seven discs for your time on the island, rather than the conventional eight. What is your first?
HC: Well it has to be Ode to Joy, obviously, does it not?
RP: Why is that Henry?
HC: It is, of course, the most important work of Butterworth, and very popular amongst your guests, I know.
RP: Don't you mean Beethoven? Ode to Joy by Ludwig van Beethoven?
HC: Beethoven, Butterworth. They do both begin with the letter B. It's all the same is it not?
RP: Quite. Here is Ode to Joy, by Ludwig van Butterworth.
Cue Music: Ode to Joy, Ludwig van Beethoven
RP: Were you an only child? Do you remember your time in Singapore?
HC: My first proper school was a convent in Darjeeling, and I had a some brothers and half-sisters.
RP: A slight muddle of languages?
HC: Yes. I came to England and thought I spoke English, it was my first language, but it was English by way of Darjeeling and Singapore and other stops, and I realized that my English was not the English of England, and that may have led to my precision with language.
RP: And somewhere along the way you ended up in Bristol. We have a Bristol record here on your list. Should we pause now to play that?
HC: I suppose it is not so much a proper disc as it is a theme that means the universe to so many of us, in the trashiest possible sense of meaning, and the composer, I can't remember his name but I can see his silly hairline and curly do, and I can still hear his ridiculous Australian accent, he's not really from Bristol, but I suppose he is as accurately claimed by Bristol as the Canadians claim the Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and ... well ... yes. We can play that disc now.
Cue Music: Theme from "Doctor Who," composed by Ron Grainer
RP: That was the "Doctor Who" theme by Ron Grainer. You homed in on the theatre, Henry. Why?
HC: Bristol was quite a small place, but it did have many excellent theatres, amongst them the Old Vic, and I was working as a critic at the time and I gravitated towards those theatres and the theatre folk. Shortly after that I wrote my first play. I was still working as a critic at the time, and a fellow critic came back holding a picture of four young men, and he said he'd "seen the future," and they were wearing these strange cuts, like bowls on their heads, and I was fascinated.
RP: Should we share your next disc now?
HC: Yes. Why not?
Cue Music: Daydream Believer, performed by the Monkees, written by Neil Diamond
RP: That was the Monkees, "Daydream Believer," interestingly enough that was written and composed by Neil Diamond. And so at that time you started writing plays in earnest.
HC: Yes. Yes, so, (lights cigarette, takes a drag, exhales) my first play was staged on television, rather than on the stage; of course, that was after a number of radio plays. And then I started writing a show, a sort of short serial, about a young Darjeeling Doctor, and it was translated, I discovered, into Bengali, and it became quite a hit in India, and that was why was able to keep writing it, although I didn't realize that until much later.
RP: Shall we share your next disc? From an old friend of yours.
HC: Ah yes. Please do.
Cue Music: Send in the Clowns, by Stephen Sondheim.
RP: That was Send in the Clowns from Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music."
HC: And you know, Roy, the funniest thing was that Stephen new I hated clowns. I had a terrible experience with a clown in Singapore, and he loved to tease me at cast parties and tell me that "Send in the Clowns" was written with me in mind.
RP: That is something, Henry, to be the inspiration for a Sondheim classic.
HC: I suppose. If practical jokes can be taken as honoring.
RP: Let us have record number five.
HC: Oh must we? I know we must. So when Annie was cast in "'Tis Pity she's a Whore. ..."
RP: Annie is your wife?
HC: Still. Shockingly. Yet when she was cast in "'Tis Pity she's a Whore," my heart was taken back to my first marriage with Charlotte and a song, I should be ashamed to say, I love.
RP: Your fifth disc?
HC: Exactly.
Cue Music: "You've Lost that Loving Feeling," The Righteous Brothers.
RP: The Righteous Brothers sing "You've Lost that Loving Feeling."
HC: I would have sworn I loved that while eating milk chocolate on a lake, but it is hard to keep things such as that straight. But there is something about those two black men harmonizing a love song that has long given me shivers, let's say.
RP: The Righteous Brothers, however, are a pair of white singers from Orange County, California.
HC: (laughing hearlity) And I am sure you're going to tell me that Andre Previn was the same age as Mia Farrow.
RP: Now why would I do that?
HC: I had a dream about that Righteous Brothers song in my flat in London when I first came to the West End, and it was revelatory.
RP: I believe Woody Allen said the same thing about Mr. Previn.
HC: We're entering into a world of infinite regresses, mirrors face each other, and the playwright is vaguely ashamed of his taste, though I am not.
RP: Oh, of course. Hmm ... it's time we got back to the music, and I believe we are on disc six.
HC: This is, at least I imagine it is, a tropical island.
RP: Oh, yes, yes, of course it is.
HC: My daughter, Debbie, would never forgive me then, if I didn't abase myself with my admission of a love for Elvis and his Hawaii inspired work.
RP: Debbie is short for Deborah, obviously?
HC: No. Just Debbie. That was the name Charlotte chose. Just Debbie.
RP: Strange that. Do you call her Deb.
HC: No. I continue to call her by her name, Debbie, but she does refuse to call me "Fa" and prefers, now, to call me Henry.
RP: Poor you.
Cue Music: "Can't Help Falling in Love," by Elvis.
RP (cont'd): That was Elvis singing "Can't Help Falling in Love" from Blue Hawaii. You have only one disc left, Henry. Where do you see that disc falling in your life?
HC: It is connected, interestingly enough, with Jean-Paul Sartre.
RP: Sartre? The existentialist?
HC: Exactly. It seems that when I was telling Monsieur Sarte that he was, essentially, superficial, the pair of us were listening to and loving the same disc.
RP: Shall we play that disc, Henry?
HC: By all means.
Cue Music: "Da Doo Ron Ron," by The Crystals.
RP: The Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron." A philosophical choice, I venture.
HC: Do you, Roy? I thought it daft, but I will hand it to you; you are good at your job. Put the guest at ease, pretned you don't judge their choices. Well done you. And, of course, ignore your guests jibes.
RP: Penultimate question, Henry. Would you try to escape your island?
HC: HA! Absolutely not. Death by water is worse than death by sand and sun.
RP: And so we end with your book. What would that be?
HC: As a playwright, a poet, a one time novelist, this answer must be transcendent.
RP: It rarely is.
HC: I thought of the Bible, the Quran, other works of spiritual brilliance ,,,
RP: Yes, Henry.
HC: But I am going to be crazy and choose Watership Down in both English and Swahili.
RP: And your luxury item?
HC: An endless supply of Irish Breakfast Tea.
RP: And there you have it.
HC: Thank you, Roy.
RP: Thank you, Henry.
*loosely adapted (and partially plagiarized) from Tom Stoppard's appearance on Desert Island Discs, January 1985.
February 15, 2008
In a word: spectacular.
Stoppard uses the play-within-a-play structure to mess around with ideas of reality, honesty, fidelity and love. Characters include a playwright (Henry) and two actresses (Charlotte and Annie). Henry is married to first one, then the other: "To marry one actress is unfortunate, to marry two is simply asking for it."
Stoppard puts his gift for verbal gymnastics into Henry's mouth and we watch Henry struggle (eloquently) to articulate how he feels about the women in his life, his job, and the intersection of the two. His monologue with the cricket bat pretty much sums up how I feel about writing.
In 1999 I spent a summer in London taking a theatre course; I saw some 25 plays in a month. The best of those was the unforgettable Donmar Warehouse production of this play featuring Jennifer Ehle (of P&P fame) and Stephen Dillane, both of whom went on to win Tonys for their roles. Tom Stoppard is a genius and I'll read and watch anything with his name on it. "The Real Thing" shows him at the pinnacle of his craft.
Stoppard uses the play-within-a-play structure to mess around with ideas of reality, honesty, fidelity and love. Characters include a playwright (Henry) and two actresses (Charlotte and Annie). Henry is married to first one, then the other: "To marry one actress is unfortunate, to marry two is simply asking for it."
Stoppard puts his gift for verbal gymnastics into Henry's mouth and we watch Henry struggle (eloquently) to articulate how he feels about the women in his life, his job, and the intersection of the two. His monologue with the cricket bat pretty much sums up how I feel about writing.
In 1999 I spent a summer in London taking a theatre course; I saw some 25 plays in a month. The best of those was the unforgettable Donmar Warehouse production of this play featuring Jennifer Ehle (of P&P fame) and Stephen Dillane, both of whom went on to win Tonys for their roles. Tom Stoppard is a genius and I'll read and watch anything with his name on it. "The Real Thing" shows him at the pinnacle of his craft.
September 17, 2016
This play about fidelity and infidelity may be self serving, if Stoppard's private life is considered, but that doesn't stop it being sharp, clever, acid, insightful, witty, elegant, highly structured, and all the things that seem to be his hallmark.
The structure is tricksy but so smoothly done as to be invisible without looking for it. Some of the diversions are brilliant - the cricket bat, though others less so - digital watches. Overall this is more accessible than other Stoppard plays in emotional terms and a little rawer.
The characters are not easy to like and none of them behave well (perhaps Max...) but that lends to the sense of people either fighting or yielding to their flaws in a relatively realistic fashion.
The structure is tricksy but so smoothly done as to be invisible without looking for it. Some of the diversions are brilliant - the cricket bat, though others less so - digital watches. Overall this is more accessible than other Stoppard plays in emotional terms and a little rawer.
The characters are not easy to like and none of them behave well (perhaps Max...) but that lends to the sense of people either fighting or yielding to their flaws in a relatively realistic fashion.
February 27, 2014
Very enjoyable play about love (when is it "the real thing"?). The play centers around Henry (a playwright) and Annie (an actress); as often in Stoppard's plays, certain scenes & phrases repeat throughout the play with small variations. In this play one of the repeating scenes is of a wife returning home after a trip to a husband who thinks he has evidence of her infidelity -- sometimes the husband is mistaken, sometimes the wife has lied but not been unfaithful, sometimes he is correct. I found the different aspects of jealousy interesting, but some aspects of the play were a bit dated (a rant at the beginning about digital watches for example).
August 5, 2012
Fun if you're in the mood for it. Love is not an easy topic to pick, but Stoppard delivers a fresh and "theatrical" look I'd love to see "in the flesh" so as to revel in the "about turns" and deceptions. Just what is this thing called love? called real thing? Who is acting what part?
February 17, 2016
Heart-wrenching!
So eh, I decided to give it an extra star . . . for the language in it. I came back to get a quote, and ended up reading the whole play. It's such a pleasure to read!
So eh, I decided to give it an extra star . . . for the language in it. I came back to get a quote, and ended up reading the whole play. It's such a pleasure to read!
February 12, 2020
I’ve been waiting to read the play since I stumbled upon a quote from it in “Brainpickings” years ago:
“It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared — she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.”
I did search for the text online (to no avail), and it seemed impossible to find a paper copy, so I left it at that, hoping that someday, somehow, I would have a chance to study the whole play.
There is a second-hand bookshop in Brussels that I particularly love. Called “The Ivory Monkey” (after an obscure Flemish novel), neatly tucked in the corner of a small square, it is stuffed to the brims with books in English, Dutch, French, and Spanish. A friend and I discovered it by pure chance two years ago and it so happens that I stumble upon a delightful little story every time I enter there.
Last Saturday, as I was browsing a messy pile of books on the bookstore’s floor, “The Real Thing” finally showed its face.
“The Real Thing” is witty (but not earth-shatteringly so, mind you), a tad pretentious, and unfolds like a matryoshka doll. The words that initially hooked me – that brilliant definition of love I shared above – appeared when I least expected them, which made them that much sweeter: during a conversation between a quite cynical teenage daughter and her father (not a saint himself). Songs dispersed between the scenes include several deliciously kitschy 1960s pop hits (e.g. The Crystals – “Da Doo Ron Ron”, Herman’s Hermits – “I’m Into Something Good”, The Righteous Brothers – “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, The Monkees – “I’m a Believer”), and I appreciate a good soundtrack. Also, there is nothing idealistic or grandiose about love and relationships - well, about humans in general, in this play. Flawed, often annoying characters, vulnerability and (a bit too) clever dialogues, that is what is on display, and it makes for quite the delightful read. I now hope I get the chance to actually see it played in a theatre.
Below, some more quotes that I’ve noted down:
***
HENRY: I’m supposed to be one of those intellectual playwrights. I’m going to look a total prick, aren’t I, announcing that while I was telling Jean-Paul Sartre and the post-war French existentialists where they had got it wrong, I was spending the whole time listening to the Crystals singing ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’.
***
HENRY: Yes, I’m not very up to date. I like Herman’s Hermits, and the Hollies, and the Everly Brothers, and Brenda Lee, and the Supremes… I don’t mean everything they did. I don’t like artists. I like singles.
MAX: This is sheer pretension.
HENRY: No. It moves me, the way people are supposed to be moved by real music. I was taken once to Covent Garden to hear a woman called Callas in a sort of foreign musical with no dancing which people were donating kidneys to get tickets for. The idea was that I would be cure of my strange disability. As though the place were a kind of Lourdes, except that instead of the front steps being littered with wooden legs, it would be tin ears. My illness at the time took the form of believing that the Righteous Brothers’ recording of ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’ on the London Label was possibly the most haunting, the most deeply moving noise ever produced by the human spirit, and this female vocalist person was going to set me right.
***
ANNIE: Isn’t it awful? Max is so unhappy while I feel so… thrilled. His misery just seems… not in very good taste. Am I awful? He leaves letters for me at rehearsal, you know, and gets me to come to the phone by pretending to be my agent and people. He loves me, and he wants to punish me for his pain, but I can’t come up with proper guilt. I’m so irritated by it. It’s so tiring and so uninteresting. You never write about that, you lot. (…) Gallons of ink and miles of typewriter ribbon expended on the misery of the unrequited lover; not a word about the utter tedium of the unrequiting.
***
HENRY: I don’t know how to write love. I try to write it properly, but it just comes out embarrassing. It’s either childish or it’s rude. And the rude bits are absolutely juvenile. I can’t use any of it. My credibility is already hanging by a thread after Desert Island Discs. Anyway, I’m too prudish. Perhaps I should write it completely artificial. Blank verse. Poetic imagery. Not so much of the ‘Will you still love me when my tits are droopy?’ ‘Of course I will, darling, it’s your bum I’m mad for’, and more of the ‘By my troth, thy beauty makest the moon hide her radiance’, what do you think? (…) Loving and being loved is unliterary. It’s happiness expressed in banality and lust. It makes me nervous to see three-quarters of a page and no writing on it. I mean, I talk better than this.
ANNIE: You’ll have to learn to do sub-text. My Strindberg is steaming with lust, but there is nothing rude on the page. We just talk round it.
***
ANNIE: Well, why aren’t you ever jealous?
HENRY: Of whom?
ANNIE: Of anybody. You don’t care if Gerald Jones sticks his tongue in my ear – which, incidentally, he does whenever he gets the chance.
HENRY: Is that what this is all about?
ANNIE: It’s insulting the way you just laugh.
HENRY: But you’ve got no interest in him.
ANNIE: I know what, but why should you assume it?
HENRY: Because you haven’t. This is stupid.
ANNIE: But why don’t you mind?
HENRY: I do.
ANNIE: No, you don’t.
HENRY: That’s true, I don’t. Why is that? It’s because I feel superior. There is, poor bugger, picking up the odd crumb of ear wax from the rich man’s table. You’re right. I don’t mind. I like it. I like the way this presumption admits his poverty. I like him, knowing that that’s all there is, because you’re coming home to me and we don’t want anyone else. I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn’t one’s lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. There’s you and there’s them. I love you so.
***
On (good and bad) writing:
HENRY: Where’s my cricket bat? (…) Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. 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 like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… 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… 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 bat will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands struck into your armpits.
(…) Words don’t deserve that kind of malarkey. They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more, and Brodie knocks corners off without knowing he’s doing it. So everything he builds is jerry-built. It’s rubbish. An intelligent child could push it over. 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.
***
On (changing) politics:
HENRY: (…) But when he gets into his stride, or rather his lurch, announcing every stale revelation of the newly enlightened, like stout Cortez coming upon the Pacific – war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft… It’s all here: the Stock Exchange, the arms dealers, the press barons… You can’t fool Brodie – patriotism is propaganda, religion is a con trick, royalty is an anachronism… Pages and pages of it. It’s like being run over very slowly by a traveling freak show of favourite simpletons, the india rubber pedagogue, the midget intellectual, the human panacea…
ANNIE: It’s his view of the world. Perhaps from where he’s standing you’d see it the same way.
HENRY: Or perhaps I’d realize where I’m standing. Or at least that I’m standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and it has no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism – they aren’t even like coffee mugs. There’s nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as though they were something there to change, you’ll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter people’s perceptions so that they behave a little differently at that axis of behavior where we locate politics and justice; but if you don’t know this, then you’re acting on a mistake. Prejudice is the expression of this mistake.
***
ANNIE: I don’t feel selfish, I feel hoist. I send out waves, you know. Not free. Not interested. He sort of got under the radar. Acting daft on a train. Next thing I’m looking round for him, makes the day feel better, it’s like love or something: no – love, absolutely, how can I say it wasn’t? You weren’t replaced, or even replaceable. But I liked it, being older for once, in charge, my pupil. And it was a long way north. And so on. I’m sorry I hurt you. But I meant it. It meant something. And now that it means less than I thought and I feel silly, I won’t drop him as if it was nothing, a pick-up, it wasn’t that, I’m not that. I just want him to stop needing me so I can stop behaving well. This is me behaving well.
HENRY: If it was me – me and – I don’t know – Miranda Jessop – would you think I was a moralist of unique discrimination or just another cake-eater trying to have it?
ANNIE: I can’t say clever things. You say things better so you sound right. But I’m right about thing which you can’t say. This is the me who loves you, this me who won’t tell Billy to go and rot, and I know I’m yours so I’m not afraid for you – I have to choose who I hurt and I choose you because I’m yours. I’m only sorry for your pain but even your pain is the pain of letting go of something, some idea of me which was never true, an Annie who was complete in loving you and being loved back. Some Annie.
“It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared — she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.”
I did search for the text online (to no avail), and it seemed impossible to find a paper copy, so I left it at that, hoping that someday, somehow, I would have a chance to study the whole play.
There is a second-hand bookshop in Brussels that I particularly love. Called “The Ivory Monkey” (after an obscure Flemish novel), neatly tucked in the corner of a small square, it is stuffed to the brims with books in English, Dutch, French, and Spanish. A friend and I discovered it by pure chance two years ago and it so happens that I stumble upon a delightful little story every time I enter there.
Last Saturday, as I was browsing a messy pile of books on the bookstore’s floor, “The Real Thing” finally showed its face.
“The Real Thing” is witty (but not earth-shatteringly so, mind you), a tad pretentious, and unfolds like a matryoshka doll. The words that initially hooked me – that brilliant definition of love I shared above – appeared when I least expected them, which made them that much sweeter: during a conversation between a quite cynical teenage daughter and her father (not a saint himself). Songs dispersed between the scenes include several deliciously kitschy 1960s pop hits (e.g. The Crystals – “Da Doo Ron Ron”, Herman’s Hermits – “I’m Into Something Good”, The Righteous Brothers – “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, The Monkees – “I’m a Believer”), and I appreciate a good soundtrack. Also, there is nothing idealistic or grandiose about love and relationships - well, about humans in general, in this play. Flawed, often annoying characters, vulnerability and (a bit too) clever dialogues, that is what is on display, and it makes for quite the delightful read. I now hope I get the chance to actually see it played in a theatre.
Below, some more quotes that I’ve noted down:
***
HENRY: I’m supposed to be one of those intellectual playwrights. I’m going to look a total prick, aren’t I, announcing that while I was telling Jean-Paul Sartre and the post-war French existentialists where they had got it wrong, I was spending the whole time listening to the Crystals singing ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’.
***
HENRY: Yes, I’m not very up to date. I like Herman’s Hermits, and the Hollies, and the Everly Brothers, and Brenda Lee, and the Supremes… I don’t mean everything they did. I don’t like artists. I like singles.
MAX: This is sheer pretension.
HENRY: No. It moves me, the way people are supposed to be moved by real music. I was taken once to Covent Garden to hear a woman called Callas in a sort of foreign musical with no dancing which people were donating kidneys to get tickets for. The idea was that I would be cure of my strange disability. As though the place were a kind of Lourdes, except that instead of the front steps being littered with wooden legs, it would be tin ears. My illness at the time took the form of believing that the Righteous Brothers’ recording of ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’ on the London Label was possibly the most haunting, the most deeply moving noise ever produced by the human spirit, and this female vocalist person was going to set me right.
***
ANNIE: Isn’t it awful? Max is so unhappy while I feel so… thrilled. His misery just seems… not in very good taste. Am I awful? He leaves letters for me at rehearsal, you know, and gets me to come to the phone by pretending to be my agent and people. He loves me, and he wants to punish me for his pain, but I can’t come up with proper guilt. I’m so irritated by it. It’s so tiring and so uninteresting. You never write about that, you lot. (…) Gallons of ink and miles of typewriter ribbon expended on the misery of the unrequited lover; not a word about the utter tedium of the unrequiting.
***
HENRY: I don’t know how to write love. I try to write it properly, but it just comes out embarrassing. It’s either childish or it’s rude. And the rude bits are absolutely juvenile. I can’t use any of it. My credibility is already hanging by a thread after Desert Island Discs. Anyway, I’m too prudish. Perhaps I should write it completely artificial. Blank verse. Poetic imagery. Not so much of the ‘Will you still love me when my tits are droopy?’ ‘Of course I will, darling, it’s your bum I’m mad for’, and more of the ‘By my troth, thy beauty makest the moon hide her radiance’, what do you think? (…) Loving and being loved is unliterary. It’s happiness expressed in banality and lust. It makes me nervous to see three-quarters of a page and no writing on it. I mean, I talk better than this.
ANNIE: You’ll have to learn to do sub-text. My Strindberg is steaming with lust, but there is nothing rude on the page. We just talk round it.
***
ANNIE: Well, why aren’t you ever jealous?
HENRY: Of whom?
ANNIE: Of anybody. You don’t care if Gerald Jones sticks his tongue in my ear – which, incidentally, he does whenever he gets the chance.
HENRY: Is that what this is all about?
ANNIE: It’s insulting the way you just laugh.
HENRY: But you’ve got no interest in him.
ANNIE: I know what, but why should you assume it?
HENRY: Because you haven’t. This is stupid.
ANNIE: But why don’t you mind?
HENRY: I do.
ANNIE: No, you don’t.
HENRY: That’s true, I don’t. Why is that? It’s because I feel superior. There is, poor bugger, picking up the odd crumb of ear wax from the rich man’s table. You’re right. I don’t mind. I like it. I like the way this presumption admits his poverty. I like him, knowing that that’s all there is, because you’re coming home to me and we don’t want anyone else. I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn’t one’s lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. There’s you and there’s them. I love you so.
***
On (good and bad) writing:
HENRY: Where’s my cricket bat? (…) Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. 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 like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… 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… 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 bat will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands struck into your armpits.
(…) Words don’t deserve that kind of malarkey. They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more, and Brodie knocks corners off without knowing he’s doing it. So everything he builds is jerry-built. It’s rubbish. An intelligent child could push it over. 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.
***
On (changing) politics:
HENRY: (…) But when he gets into his stride, or rather his lurch, announcing every stale revelation of the newly enlightened, like stout Cortez coming upon the Pacific – war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft… It’s all here: the Stock Exchange, the arms dealers, the press barons… You can’t fool Brodie – patriotism is propaganda, religion is a con trick, royalty is an anachronism… Pages and pages of it. It’s like being run over very slowly by a traveling freak show of favourite simpletons, the india rubber pedagogue, the midget intellectual, the human panacea…
ANNIE: It’s his view of the world. Perhaps from where he’s standing you’d see it the same way.
HENRY: Or perhaps I’d realize where I’m standing. Or at least that I’m standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and it has no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism – they aren’t even like coffee mugs. There’s nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as though they were something there to change, you’ll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter people’s perceptions so that they behave a little differently at that axis of behavior where we locate politics and justice; but if you don’t know this, then you’re acting on a mistake. Prejudice is the expression of this mistake.
***
ANNIE: I don’t feel selfish, I feel hoist. I send out waves, you know. Not free. Not interested. He sort of got under the radar. Acting daft on a train. Next thing I’m looking round for him, makes the day feel better, it’s like love or something: no – love, absolutely, how can I say it wasn’t? You weren’t replaced, or even replaceable. But I liked it, being older for once, in charge, my pupil. And it was a long way north. And so on. I’m sorry I hurt you. But I meant it. It meant something. And now that it means less than I thought and I feel silly, I won’t drop him as if it was nothing, a pick-up, it wasn’t that, I’m not that. I just want him to stop needing me so I can stop behaving well. This is me behaving well.
HENRY: If it was me – me and – I don’t know – Miranda Jessop – would you think I was a moralist of unique discrimination or just another cake-eater trying to have it?
ANNIE: I can’t say clever things. You say things better so you sound right. But I’m right about thing which you can’t say. This is the me who loves you, this me who won’t tell Billy to go and rot, and I know I’m yours so I’m not afraid for you – I have to choose who I hurt and I choose you because I’m yours. I’m only sorry for your pain but even your pain is the pain of letting go of something, some idea of me which was never true, an Annie who was complete in loving you and being loved back. Some Annie.
July 14, 2014
I'm not all that familiar with Stoppard's stuff (I saw and loved Arcadia a few years ago), but I'll certainly be reading more.
The Real Thing is all about love, and it tackles it with an intelligence, wit, and depth that I've rarely come across. The titular "real thing" is hard to pin down; there are a couple of plays within this play and all the characters are professional actors/writers who are constantly mixing their profession with their personal lives by constantly acting. This doesn't make for a particularly easy read.
The two central characters, Henry and Annie, are constantly professing their love for each other, but our understanding of what those three words mean is constantly changing throughout the play. Even though I couldn't pin down what Stoppard's vision of "The Real Thing" might be, I'm convinced this play has some of the most honest and true dialogue about love I've ever read, particularly the moment Annie tells Henry: "You have to find a part of yourself where I'm not important or you won't be worth loving."
That line alone has made me head straight away to the next Stoppard Play.
The Real Thing is all about love, and it tackles it with an intelligence, wit, and depth that I've rarely come across. The titular "real thing" is hard to pin down; there are a couple of plays within this play and all the characters are professional actors/writers who are constantly mixing their profession with their personal lives by constantly acting. This doesn't make for a particularly easy read.
The two central characters, Henry and Annie, are constantly professing their love for each other, but our understanding of what those three words mean is constantly changing throughout the play. Even though I couldn't pin down what Stoppard's vision of "The Real Thing" might be, I'm convinced this play has some of the most honest and true dialogue about love I've ever read, particularly the moment Annie tells Henry: "You have to find a part of yourself where I'm not important or you won't be worth loving."
That line alone has made me head straight away to the next Stoppard Play.
January 16, 2021
I read this play for the second time because a friend said she loved it when she saw it on Broadway and that it was truly great. I had read it 18 years before and couldn't remember it at all, so I wanted to give it a another look.
If I ever saw it performed, I could probably enjoy reading it yet again. But reading it without having seen it, simply doesn't work.
The dialogue is witty, but sometimes the characters are playing other characters in other plays, and sometimes they are playing the actors in everyday life. And without the visual clues of a production, it's sometimes difficult to tell which is which and who is who and who is sleeping with who. I got lost repeatedly. When I was able to figure out who was who the irony worked and it was fun. But most of the time I was simply lost.
If I ever saw it performed, I could probably enjoy reading it yet again. But reading it without having seen it, simply doesn't work.
The dialogue is witty, but sometimes the characters are playing other characters in other plays, and sometimes they are playing the actors in everyday life. And without the visual clues of a production, it's sometimes difficult to tell which is which and who is who and who is sleeping with who. I got lost repeatedly. When I was able to figure out who was who the irony worked and it was fun. But most of the time I was simply lost.
June 12, 2015
Quite good, very clever. Would read again. Did read again, actually, since I had forgotten I already read it before.
Three stars only because I'm comparing this to other Stoppard plays -- R&G are Dead, Arcadia, which blow my mind.
I think one of the things that bugs me is that the play is about finding love, "the real thing," but while we certainly see a lot of things that *aren't* "the real thing," it never makes that final connection. It feels like the final scene(s) are supposed to get us there, but by this point, the relevant character has proved himself so clever and aloof throughout the play that it's hard for me to believe that he has changed or can change. This might come across better when staged.
Three stars only because I'm comparing this to other Stoppard plays -- R&G are Dead, Arcadia, which blow my mind.
I think one of the things that bugs me is that the play is about finding love, "the real thing," but while we certainly see a lot of things that *aren't* "the real thing," it never makes that final connection. It feels like the final scene(s) are supposed to get us there, but by this point, the relevant character has proved himself so clever and aloof throughout the play that it's hard for me to believe that he has changed or can change. This might come across better when staged.
August 12, 2014
I have seen this performed once, and read it many times, but not for years. It is still powerful, especially the way it echoes and re-echoes, and that moment when you step through the first veil and wonder if there are more. It seems quite clear to me that this is good, very good, unlike much of the other drama I have been reading, but I still do not really understand why, and of course I continue to believe that most drama is written to be performed and so how it reads is not all there is to it. But for reading, I love Stoppard.
January 24, 2015
A creative look at the evolution of love in a couples' relationship.
I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite. I'm yours, I'm committed.
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. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity...
I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite. I'm yours, I'm committed.
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. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity...
January 14, 2016
The idea that "Mirage and reality merge in love" finds its perfect theatrical portrayal here. Plays are performed within plays; lives are re-written as lies; and re-written as difficult and hard to swallow truths about the human heart; all the while love--the most intangible asset of them all--finds itself buried in bowl of vegetable dip--the comical mimetic counterpart of Chekhov's gun. A brilliant play on every level.
April 18, 2012
Dull w/some smart meta pretension. I really don’t see how this is the play with the material get 2 lead and one sup Tonys in a year (and 2 lead Tonys for its revival). I barely even remember Charlotte, and I guess it is clever to talk at length about plays in a play – certainly it worked wonders in some of Shakespeare’s. But it was a slog.
March 23, 2016
I have been looking for this book since primary school and it was worth the wait. The story just pulls you in with every word and I wanted more when I finished. It's a great book for anyone who likes Coca Cola, business and so much more. I defiantly recommend it.
August 21, 2012
As per usual with Stoppard, surprisingly hilarious for something so thoughtful, and surprisingly thoughtful for something hilarious. The kind of theatre that seems to love the stage it plays on.
September 16, 2013
What a good thing. Love, art, writing, pop music, life. What is real, what does it matter. TOM STOPPARD, MAN.
December 5, 2016
Henry is soo witty.
I loved so many quotes of this play.
I loved so many quotes of this play.
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