- Home
- Drama
- Playscripts
- The Real Thing
The Real Thing
The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard was described by Frank Rich in The New York Times as ‘not only Mr. Stoppard’s most moving play, but also the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years.’
2 in stock
Join Faber Members for 10% off your first order.
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 written 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?
The Real Thing was first performed at the Strand Theatre, London, on 16 November 1982.
Tom Stoppard’s work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, After Magritte, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, the trilogy The Coast of Utopia, Rock ’n’ Roll, The Hard Problem and Leopoldstadt. His radio plays include If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge, Where Are They Now?,…
Read MoreBrowse a selection of books we think you might also like, with genre matches and a few wildcards thrown in.
Faber has been publishing playscripts for nearly seventy years, all the way back to John Osborne’s classic play Look Back …
From sea adventures to interconnected narratives, we’ve picked out the best three-part sagas, long and short, from our list for …
Tom Stoppard, a playwright who holds a special place at the heart of Faber, celebrated his eightieth birthday on 3 …