Star-Studded Revival Not Quite ‘The Real Thing’

SCOTTISH STAR AS ERUDITE PLAYWRIGHT: Ewan McGregor in Tom Stoppard’s ‘The Real Thing.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

THE REAL THING
Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Sam Gold
Through January 4, 2015
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

Although Tom Stoppard is not the easiest playwright to sit through, one must give him credit for being one of the most erudite dramatists ever. Certainly The Real Thing is a perfect example of how his mind works and his beliefs on the complexities of marriage and infidelity and, as presented on Broadway in January 1984, under the superb direction of Mike Nichols, one got to see the guts and the marrow of broken marriages, infidelity, passion, love, betrayal and guilt. However, director Sam Gold  has stripped the heart and soul of this show, as he did to another British import, the 2012 revival of John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger at the Laura Pels Theatre. Mr. Gold’s obsession with free form, non-grounded, minimalistic sets where “not just less but much less is more” is absolutely maddening. After all, the play was first done in England in 1982 and showed intellectual, well-to-do playwrights/characters in the play in their natural habitat of posh flats.

As if the play and its settings aren’t confusing enough, Mr. Gold and his set designer David Zinn have added another layer of “where are we now and what year is it?” to Stoppard’s play to make it almost incomprehensible. Adding doo-wop songs between scene changes, sung by the actors, leaves the audience at a loss for words.

Starting out are Charlotte (Cynthia Nixon) and Max (Josh Hamilton), a married couple having a to-do over the fact that she has gone to Geneva without her passport. This starts a row between the couple in which Charlotte leaves Max. This is followed by a doo-wop songfest in which the actors come on and rearrange the set and the lights come on Charlotte and Henry (Ewan McGregor). In this scene. we learn that Charlotte and Max were doing a scene from Henry’s latest play, House of Cards. On this particular Sunday, Max and his wife, Annie, another actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal), are visiting Henry and Charlotte. They are all friends in real life. However, in this life, it is Henry and Annie who are having the passionate love affair. Needless to say, the scene ends on a down note, but the director has his actors going into another doo-wop scene change.

This time Annie and Henry are living a blissful, passionate life, Max is wallowing in his sorrow and Annie is getting pleasure out of his misery and is totally okay with it. They do love each other; Henry has the usual writer’s block and things start going south. Another scene change, more doo-wops, Annie starts getting antsy and has an affair with a much younger fellow actor. This is where life imitates art; it is Henry who is jealous and has to keep his covetousness in tow, for he desperately loves Annie and, as she explains to him, “I love you, too, and you are my chap.”

Mr. McGregor and Ms. Gyllenhaal are movie stars who are making their Broadway debuts here. Ms. Nixon and Mr. Hamilton are seasoned theatrical actors, all four of them have theatrical experience and are pros in their field and add marquee value, but together they totally lack any chemistry. They deliver their lines devoid of any real feeling or the motivations behind them. If only Mr. Gold could have confined them in a real setting where they didn’t have to break character and waste time changing sets and do all those damn doo-wops and instead tried to elicit some genuine emotions from them, it would have made a far more interesting and enjoyable evening and made Mr. Stoppard’s work a pleasure to sit through.

TROUBLED COUPLE: Cynthia Nixon & Ewan McGregor in Tom Stoppard’s ‘The Real Thing.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

NIXON’S SECOND TIME IN SHOW: Cynthia Nixon (left) played young Debbie in the 1984 production of ‘The Real Thing’ & returns as Charlotte, seen here with playwright Henry (Ewan McGregor) in the latest Broadway revival of the show. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 6, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on November 5, 2014