#Play Tony Award Best Play 1984

Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close

• Playwright:  Tom Stoppard (1937)
  
• Title: The Real Thing
  
• Genre: play
• Opening night: 1982
  
• Trivia: Tony Award for Best Play 1984
  
• Trivia: Tony Award for Best Revival Play 2000
• List of Challenges 2020
• Monthly reading plan

Finished: 27.02.2020
Genre: play
Rating: D

Quickscan:

1. Playwright Henry (J. Irons)  and
2. ….actress Annie (G. Close)  fall in love
3. while cheating on their spouses.
4. They then marry and cheat on each other.
5. Core message:
6. Reality catches up with those who ignore it (2 married couples).
7. Art (playwriting) is no longer impossible imaginings
8. …but what is really happening.
9. — investigating adultry
10. — questioning the nature of true love
11. Title: The Real Thing…finding “the real thing” in second marriages
12. Type play: semi-autobiographical…Tom Stoppard is divorced and remarried.
13. Literary device Stoppard uses a theatrical device, the play-within-a-play.

Conclusion:

1. I am trying to read 50 Best Plays of the last 100 years.
2. The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard is nr. 20 on the list.
3. Characters stumble to enlightenment….
4. but realize that marriage is the ties that bind
5. …and strangle.
6. Dialogue is a combination of
7. …chit-chat and philosophical discussion
8. on the nature of true love.
9. The writing is interesting, but a bit belabored
10. …Stoppard is trying too hard to be clever.
11. Probably The Real Thing
12. …must be seen on the stage.
13. It won 2 Tony Awards
14. …so Stoppard must be doing something right.
15. Still it is ….not my kind of play.