Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.“I don’t know how to write love,” laments Henry, the playwright at the centre of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. And, in essence, this super-smart 1982 comedy represents Stoppard’s own wrestle with the same conundrum. It is given an elegant, mischievous revival at the Old Vic by Max Webster, with James McArdle enormously enjoyable as the pompous, acerbic Henry, a character for whom the term “mansplaining” could have been invented. The drama opens with a play within a play: a performance of a stagy comedy by Henry about adultery, in which the betrayed husband responds to news of his wife’s infidelity with smart quips and savvy innuendos. Switch to another living room, this time in the “real world”, and it emerges that Henry is in fact sleeping with Annie, the wife of his lead actor. Suffice to say that Max, the lead actor in question, does not respond with bons mots and sharp ripostes.From there, examples follow of writers grappling with the expression of love and lust — from John Ford to August Strindberg to soaring Puccini operas and treacly 1960s pop songs. All the while, Henry struggles to pinpoint in a script how he feels about Annie, and Stoppard considers veracity and authenticity — in love, in art, in belief — and how we know when we have reached “the real thing”.It is, as always with Stoppard, dazzlingly intelligent — the irony here being that Stoppard demonstrates how a facility with language and style might actually be an obstruction to expressing the euphoric, sometimes ugly nature of love. Pushing against the play’s neat structure are the vulnerabilities of its characters as they deal with relationship crises. It’s when Henry runs out of words and sinks on to a sofa, a weeping, jealous mess, that he nails something true about love.Webster’s playful production relishes the meta nature of a piece that uses extracts of other dramas to create a hall-of-mirrors effect. Stage managers become part of the action, rushing to rearrange Peter McKintosh’s handsome, electric-blue living room set, as if dressing a display in department store Heal’s. The top-drawer cast bring out both the pithiness and the pain of Stoppard’s script.McArdle is brilliant as the self-absorbed Henry, handling the script’s handbrake turns with scintillating precision while letting us see the vulnerability beneath. Bel Powley has a lovely, lithe quality as the impetuous Annie, who gradually carves out her own sense of self. Other characters are underwritten — partly a function of the play’s interest in Henry’s solipsism — but Oliver Johnstone, as the bitter, wronged Max, and Susan Wokoma, as Henry’s funny, cynical ex-wife, are both excellent. Though dated in some respects, it remains an inventive comedy that best articulates love by showing how hard that is to do.★★★★☆To October 26, oldvictheatre.com
