Rumors, Affairs & Sizzling Chemistry: The Real Story Behind Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing

What does it mean to say that a romantic relationship is “the real thing”? Sir Tom Stoppard examined that age-old question in his most popular play, the 1982 comedy The Real Thing, now getting its third starry Broadway mounting thanks to Roundabout Theater Company. Of course, this being Stoppard, the title also refers to political convictions, the nature of great writing and plays vs. real life. Before checking out Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Cynthia Nixon and Josh Hamilton at the American Airlines Theatre, read up on this modern classic.


Birth of a Playwright
There’s a reason Tom Stoppard’s plays inspired their own adjective— “Stoppardian”—this celebrated writer has spent the past 50 years exploring linguistics, philosophy, politics and relationships in language uniquely his own. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, Tomas Straussler and his family escaped the Nazis in 1939, living in Singapore (where his father died), Australia and India before he arrived in England in 1946 with a new stepfather, Kenneth Stoppard. At 17, Tom began working as a journalist and quickly made the leap from drama critic to playwright, winning raves for his 1966 Hamlet offshoot Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.


A Real Departure
While praising Stoppard’s gift for wordplay, British critics found fault with the lack of emotional content in brainy comedies like Jumpers and Travesties. He responded with The Real Thing, the story of an intellectual playwright named Henry and the two actresses he marries, Charlotte and Annie—plus Henry and Charlotte’s daughter, Annie’s first husband and an imprisoned soldier Annie befriends. The play opened at London’s Strand Theatre in November 1982 and was an instant hit, earning comparisons to Pinter’s Betrayal and Coward’s Private Lives.


Affair of the Heart
Beginning with the 1981 hit On the Razzle, petite British actress Felicity Kendal created some of Stoppard’s most enduring heroines, including Hannah Jarvis in Arcadia, Flora Crewe in Indian Ink, the title spy in Hapgood and love-torn actress Annie in The Real Thing opposite Tony winner Roger Rees as Henry. In a case of life imitating art, Stoppard and his muse embarked on an eight-year romance—but their affair began almost a decade after The Real Thing.


Glenn & Jeremy’s Chemistry Lessons
For the play’s 1983 Broadway debut, director Mike Nichols paired up-and-comers Jeremy Irons (The French Lieutenant’s Woman) and Glenn Close (The World According to Garp, Broadway’s Barnum) as Henry and Annie. Known for playing buttoned-up characters, the stars shared a sizzling onstage chemistry that sparked rumors of an offstage affair. “Total rubbish,” Irons sniffed to People, as Close gushed over her co-star’s “incredible eyes,” declaring, “There’s a wonderful sensuality about him.” They remained friends, and Close fondly told a 2014 Sundance Institute audience, “We had such incredible adventures.”


To Win a Tony, Get Real
On Tony night 1984, The Real Thing reigned with five awards: Best Play, Best Actor and Actress for Irons and Close, Best Director for Nichols and Best Featured Actress for The Good Wife star Christine Baranski as Charlotte. A 2000 Broadway revival directed by David Leveaux won Tonys for Best Revival, Best Actor (Stephen Dillane) and Best Actress (Jennifer Ehle). Fun fact: Ehle was nominated alongside her mother, Waiting in the Wings star Rosemary Harris, who is currently headlining Roundabout’s off-Broadway revival of Stoppard’s Indian Ink.


Ewan & Maggie’s Broadway Affair
For the play’s current Broadway mounting, Roundabout attracted a pair of movie stars making their Main Stem debuts: Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal, helmed by in-demand director Sam Gold. (Fun fact: McGregor and Gyllenhaal played siblings in the never-aired pilot for an HBO series based on Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.) NYC stage vets Cynthia Nixon and Josh Hamilton round out the cast as Charlotte and Henry. “I’m most interested in things that present me with something I have to sort out in my own heart,” Gyllenhaal told USA Today. “This play is about how people communicate with each other, and as we work on it I’m still learning things about it—and, yeah, about my life.”


From Daughter to Mother
At 17, Cynthia Nixon earned a place in Broadway history when she played homeless teen Donna in Act One of David Rabe’s Hurlyburly (above, with William Hurt), then walked two blocks south to portray Debbie, the daughter of Charlotte and Henry, in Act Two of The Real Thing. (Both productions were directed by Mike Nichols.) “There's very little in the play I got at 17 and 18,” Nixon admitted to Newsday. “It’s a whole different thing when you’re a middle-aged person with children, a separation… I now understand how hard it is to make relationships really work over time.”


Enduring Portrait of Marriage and Art
More than three decades after its premiere, The Real Thing hasn’t dated in its portrayal of passion in many forms. “The play is detached from the social politics of today and its period,” Stoppard recently told Vanity Fair. Now 77 and newly married to his third wife, 59-year-old brewery heiress Sabrina Guinness, the playwright added, “Whatever else is going on in the world outside the theater, love and infidelity are always going on.” Or, as Annie tells Henry in Act Two: “I have to choose who I hurt and I choose you because I’m yours.”