The only excuse for this shoddy, star packed production of Tom Stoppard’s masterful play of love and adultery in the theatre from 1982 “The Real Thing”, is that it has not officially opened. So I paid $67 for the last row to see a play not ready for public consumption, where the fucking actors can’t project their voices and nobody, nobody at all, is up to the job at hand.
“The Real Thing” is art reflecting life where playwright Tom Stoppard, who left his wife for actress Felicity Kendal , , writes a play about a playwright who leaves his wife for an actress. A complete masterpiece, and one of the great love stories, it has three set pieces that are among the best things Stoppard has ever written which makes them among the best things ever written period. In the first, Henry the writer explains to his mistress Annie how good writing is like a cricket bat, the second has the mistress being seduced by a young actor on a train ride and finally, Henry explains romantic love to his daughter.
They didn’t perform any of these scenes very well at the Roundabout Theatre on Friday.
Starting with a lousy idea, having the actors sing pop songs of the 1960s between acts, it never steadies itself. The problem here is, the play opens with a play within a play and so you go from the actors singing, to the actors acting as actors acting to the actors acting as the actors and playwrights they are portraying. It is silly, it is too much, and it pushes you out of the play. And it gets worse from there.
Henry, the Stoppardish Playwright is played by an excellent actor Ewan McGregor, who you know from Star Wars but who I go back as far as “Lipstick On Your Collar” with by the only English writer peer who might well be Stoppard’s equal, the late Dennis Potter. But Ewan isn’t quite right as Henry, the chemistry is off, his relationships don’t feel real. Maybe he is a little old for the role but more likely that loud sucking sound is Maggie Gyllenhaal. When I saw “The Real Thing” in 2000, Jennifer Ehle played the role of Annie, an actress of such luminous beauty she seemed to radiate on stage. There is no questioning why somebody would leave their wife and two homes would be broken up for her, the reason is obvious. When the young actor throws himself at Annie there is no wondering why, when Henry waits out her infidelity and when Annie claims somebody else can rot in jail, it all makes sense , it is the most exciting and dynamic expression of how magical and wonderful this woman is.
Maggie Gyllenhaal?
Are you kidding,Maggie Gyllenhaal? She is too old and too square, I mean her features are too squared, are too boxed in, for the role She can’t play it, she has no magic, she has no chemistry with anyone and definitely not with Ewan. She is stupendously miscast. Maggie is too old, Jennifer was 30, Maggie is 36. As the play, which is not boring at all except in this production, Maggie keeps on ruining it. By the end, when she puts a pie in somebodies face, she appears irrational. You don’t want her around.
Henry has written a play and “The Real Thing”, after the singing, opens on the play within a play which is about adultery with Henry’s wife Charlotte (Cynthia Nixon) and actor friend Max (Josh Hamilton) on the stage within a stage. Next scene Henry is figuring out his favorite songs for a radio program “Desert Island Discs”. Stoppard makes Henry a little ashamed of his taste in pop music though why anybody needs to excuse themselves for loving “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” is beyond me. Enter Max and Max’s wife Annie who is also an actor, and who Henry is having an affair with. Meanwhile, Annie is trying to spring a young soldier from jail for an arson she considers a political statement.
By the second act, Annie and Henry are together and Annie is appearing in a production of John Ford’s 1633 “‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore” in Glasgow and trying to produce a play by the soldier.
There is nothing much right or wrong with the other actors, Cynthia Nixon isn’t particularly good but it isn’t enough to really effect the play. You can’t hear the words very well, which really, that’s the job guys, it doesn’t matter how well written the ideas are if you can’t hear them (the 2012 “Arcadia” was afflicted with the exact same problem)?And the magic at the heart of “The Real Thing” is lost. It isn’t there any more. I know what I love in the play because I’ve read it and I’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t have known it from this bad production,
I blame Todd Haines for getting the wrong people for the wrong job and I blame Roundabout’s resident director Sam Gold for not being able to pull it together. Last week I saw another Roundabout Theatre Stoppard production “Indian Ink” and let there be zero doubt “Indian Ink” is not as great a play as “The Real Thing” but Carey Perloff got it right: the actors were right, the moments added up, it was clear, luminous, beautiful. This “The Real Thing” was none of the above. A major major major disaster.
Grade: C
