About the work
Play by Tom Stoppard, first performed on 16 November 1982 at the Strand Theatre in London with Roger Rees and Felicity Kendal in the leading roles. The intellectual comedy inverts the classical notion that art depicts reality, letting aesthetic illusion claim more truth than 'real' life.
Plot
The playwright Henry is married to the actress Charlotte, who plays the lead in his new play about adultery; her stage partner Max is married to the actress Annie, who is in fact having an affair with Henry. Mirrored by his own life, the play asks whether this real infidelity differs in any meaningful way from the one told on stage. Annie also campaigns for Brodie, a soldier jailed for setting fire to a memorial wreath, and pushes Henry to adapt his manuscript for the stage.
Cultural significance
The 1984 Broadway premiere with Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close won four Tony Awards, including Best Play; a revival won the Tony Award again in 2000. The Real Thing has since become one of Stoppard's most frequently produced plays and is regularly compared with Harold Pinter's Betrayal and Noël Coward's Private Lives.