Analysis Of The Real Thing By Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing tends to show the same situation different times to see real reactions. This work plays with fiction and reality making use of the recourse of “a play inside another play”, and it deals, among other things, with infidelity, intellectual integrity, music culture and writing and interpreting plays. The first performance of The Real Thing was at the Strand Theatre in London, on 16th November 1982, and it was directed by Peter Wood. The written play was published the same year. Tomas Stoppard was born as Tomas Straussler in Czechoslovakia in 1937. He spent almost all his childhood as a refugee from de Nazis in Singapore. When the Japanese invaded Singapore, Tom’s father was killed and he went with his mother

He refused studying at the University and started working as a journalist. He became a drama critic for the Bristol Evening World and in 1960 he finished writing his first play Enter A Free Man. He became famous because of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966). Stoppard’s first plays belonged to the Theatre of the Absurd, and he was inspired by Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. He wrote plays for the TV, for the radio and also wrote short stories. Another Stoppard’s well-known plays are Jumpers, Travesties; and about his movie work they could be mentioned the most relevant ones which were Brazil and Shakespeare in Love. Critics said about him that he had no substance for writing, that he had no sensitivity, but with The Real Thing he proved that they were wrong. The Real Thing was the 20th play of Stoppard, and for this play he abandoned the style of the Theatre of the Absurd and he focused on Realism. He examined human love and

It is written in prose. Its setting is in the 1980s, and there is an elapse of time of two years between the acts. The first scene of the first act opens with Max and Charlotte situated in a living-room. Max is doing a cards’ viaduct while he is drinking wine when Charlotte arrives from her trip to Switzerland. Max accuses her of adultery because he registered between her things and found in her recipe drawer her passport. Max treats the theme like he was not affected and he even says to her that “You can slap me if you like (…) I abhor cliché” (Page 5). He knows about her infidelity but he talks about his occurrences with wit and style.

In the second scene, it is revealed in the conversation between Charlotte, Max and Henry that the first scene was a play within a play. Henry is the playwright of that play, which name is House of Cards. At the beginning of the second scene it is seen that Charlotte and Henry were in the living-room of their home. Henry is selecting songs for a radio program and there are several record sleeves around him. When Max arrives, Charlotte and Henry start a quarrel because she is tired and upset for her husband’s play, and she thinks that there are a lot of things that the Max’s character says that no one would say in a real-life situation. Annie appears onstage after going to a Committee for supporting Brodie, who is a soldier jailed unfairly because of vandalism.