And
with the delectable Jennifer Ehle playing self-confident body to Mr.
Dillane's
self-questioning mind, the show has a sensual sparkle that was less
evident in the fine Tony-winning New York incarnation of 1984 with Jeremy
Irons and Glenn Close.
"The
Real Thing" -- an import from the Donmar Warehouse, the current
epicenter of theatrical glamour in London ("Cabaret," "The
Blue Room") -- is a rare thing even in what has been an exceptionally
strong season for straight plays on Broadway: an elegant comedy of
infidelity filled with the sort of comebacks that people only wish they
were capable of themselves.
True,
this 1982 play from the author of "Jumpers" and
"Arcadia" is also always subverting itself, pointing out how
some things, love among them, defy glib articulation. But, ah, how
articulately it manages to say so. If its structural game-playing seems a
tad too clever this time around and its second act weaker than its first,
the fact remains that few comedies have ever managed to have it so
successfully both ways.
When
"The Real Thing" first opened, it was greeted with the kind of
exclamations that heralded Garbo's debut in talking pictures. "Stoppard
feels!" was the delighted implication of most of the reviews, a sense
that the most dizzyingly cerebral of British playwrights had at last led
with his heart instead of his head.
What
gave the play an extra savory twist was the fact that it was about
a dizzyingly cerebral playwright who confesses at one point that he just
doesn't know how to "write love." The title itself seemed a
charming admission of the same defeat, using the sort of nonspecific noun
that was anathema to its main character. Which isn't to say that Mr.
Stoppard had forsaken his playful intellectualism or sure hand for form.
"The
Real Thing" begins with a sort of literary trompe l'oeil: a scene in
which a husband confronts his wife with her presumed infidelity. This
turns out to be a scene in a London play by Henry, performed by Charlotte
(Sarah Woodward), an actress who is Henry's wife in real life, and Max
(Nigel Lindsay), who is married to another actress, Annie (Ms. Ehle), with
whom Henry is having an affair.
The
scene becomes a reference point for the rest of the evening, as two
real-life marriages shatter, echoing and diverging from the play within
the play. Other touchstones are provided by dialogue from such classic
plays of passion as "Miss Julie" and " 'Tis Pity She's a
Whore." And Henry, determined to conquer love on the page, comes down
with writer's block.
Although
Charlotte early on observes that the difference between dialogue onstage
and in life is that life demands "thinking time" between
epigrams, the characters are still remarkably quick on the uptake: Henry,
especially, of course, but so are Charlotte and Henry's teenage daughter,
Debbie (Charlotte Parry), and Charlotte herself.
It
is a testament to the arbitrariness of love that Henry and Charlotte seem
to be more naturally matched than Henry and Annie, who while obviously
intelligent is less deft with the mot juste. She is also unswervingly
headstrong and gets involved politically with an imprisoned Scottish
soldier (Joshua Henderson) and sexually with a younger actor (Oscar
Pearce). The distress these events cause Henry lead him to lively
disquisitions on the virtues and limitations of language, including an
unforgettable speech with a cricket bat as a visual aid.
Mr.
Dillane's Henry
delivers this moment pricelessly to Ms. Ehle's Annie. As he tries to
explain why a leaden script written by Annie's incarcerated soldier is no
good, you can see him getting high on the combined delights of his
sporting metaphor, his love of language and his love of the woman to whom
he is speaking.
Mr.
Dillane, whose
high and exposed forehead suggests both a temple of thought and an
irresistible target, is never less than captivating. Even his brightly
colored socks (the perfectly detailed costumes are by Vicki Mortimer, who
also designed the sets) inspire affection.
There's
nary a trace of the snide superiority and remoteness that Jeremy Irons
brought to his equally inspired but very different interpretation of the
role, and it could be argued that his Henry is a tad too likable. It's
hard to understand why he makes people so angry, and the character almost
becomes a holy martyr to the causes of pure language and pure love.
Fortunately,
there is another side to be heard from, and it is ably embodied by Ms.
Ehle. This rising star, best known as Elizabeth in the recent television
adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice," wears her character's
sensuality, and her awareness of its effect on others, without coyness or
irony. There is no smugness about her either (and there was, a bit, in Ms.
Close's portrayal), but there is a remarkable self-possession, especially
evident in the smile with which she covers discomfort. This Annie easily
holds her own against the older Henry and his artillery of words.
All
the actors are good, however, especially the women, to whose characters
Mr. Stoppard has tellingly devoted the greatest care. As Henry's wife
(soon to be ex-) and daughter, Ms. Woodward and Ms. Parry incisively
present figures who have both been shaped by Henry and somehow gotten
beyond him, like Eliza Dolittle with Henry Higgins.
Mr.
Leaveaux's staging adroitly balances the boulevard comedy with an
emotional gravity, an awareness that people are being seriously wounded
here. The badinage feels natural precisely because directors and actors
are so attentive to what bodies say that words don't.
Watch,
for example, Ms. Ehle's postures when Annie breaks off with Max (something
to which Mr. Lindsay responds harrowingly); when she keeps trying to touch
Henry during an argument and when she kisses Mr. Pearce's young actor in a
way that unquestionably confirms her dominance in that relationship.
This
balancing of the cerebral and the emotional is almost perfectly realized
in the first act. In the longer second act you become conscious of a
script annotating itself, and the way the play scores off Mr. Pearce's
character, the dubious object of Annie's political engagement, still feels
entirely too easy. One other caveat: Ms. Mortimer's sets seem out of scale
at the Barrymore, and when the performers climb that long upstage
staircase, it's like a challenge out of "Pilgrim's Progress."
These
are minor objections, however, about a production that so expertly fills a
vacuum on Broadway: the urbane comedy. "The Real Thing," of
course, is something more than that as well.
Throughout
the evening, vintage pop songs are played, numbers like "Do Wah Diddy
Diddy" and "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" It's a
running joke that this is the only kind of music to which Henry responds.
But the play takes the emotional pull of such music, and the varied
feelings it addresses, seriously.
As
I was leaving "The Real Thing," I noticed a middle-aged member
of the audience singing the Monkees hit "I'm a Believer," a
recording of which ends the production. It's an upbeat song, but the man
looked puzzled and just a bit melancholy. Mr. Stoppard, one imagines,
would have been pleased by the response.
THE
REAL THING
By
Tom Stoppard; directed by David Leveaux; sets and costumes by Vicki
Mortimer; lighting by Mark Henderson and David Weiner; sound by John A.
Leonard, for Aura Sound Design Ltd.; production stage manager, Bonnie L.
Becker; associate set designer, Nancy Thun; associate costume designer,
Irene Bohan; technical supervisor, Peter Fulbright; general management,
101 Productions; associate producers, Act Productions/Randall L. Wreghitt.
The Donmar Warehouse production presented by Anita Waxman, Elizabeth
Williams, Ron Kastner and Miramax Films. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater,
243 West 47th Street, Manhattan.
