Real Thing - Softcover

["The Real Thing"] is about both love and art, and it is wise, witty, and astonishing through and through...Enthralling. "Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times on the London production"

You couldn't ask for a more deeply felt, or more deeply affecting, drama about love than this..."The Real Thing" is indeed the genuine article--a play of strength, grace, melancholy and wit. "Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph on the London production"

When it comes to putting erotic love in its place, no contemporary English playwright has done so with such illuminating rigour or eloquence as Tom Stoppard. "Nicholas De Jongh, Evening Standard on the London production""

[The Real Thing] is about both love and art, and it is wise, witty, and astonishing through and through...Enthralling. Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times on the London production

You couldn't ask for a more deeply felt, or more deeply affecting, drama about love than this...The Real Thing is indeed the genuine article--a play of strength, grace, melancholy and wit. Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph on the London production

When it comes to putting erotic love in its place, no contemporary English playwright has done so with such illuminating rigour or eloquence as Tom Stoppard. Nicholas De Jongh, Evening Standard on the London production

"[The Real Thing] is about both love and art, and it is wise, witty, and astonishing through and through...Enthralling." --Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times on the London production

"You couldn't ask for a more deeply felt, or more deeply affecting, drama about love than this...The Real Thing is indeed the genuine article--a play of strength, grace, melancholy and wit." --Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph on the London production

"When it comes to putting erotic love in its place, no contemporary English playwright has done so with such illuminating rigour or eloquence as Tom Stoppard." --Nicholas De Jongh, Evening Standard on the London production

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 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?

In The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.