The Real Thing at the Old Vic review: James McArdle is a revelation in this Stoppard play

Tom Stoppard’s wittily layered drama about truth in relationships and art won Best Play at the Evening Standard Awards in 1982. Though some of the social attitudes and trappings show their vintage – male chauvinism and trimphones, anyone? – the script’s intelligence and passion shine through. Max Webster’s elegant production even manages a deft topspin of modernity.

James McArdle, often a gruff and husky presence, is a revelation here as the Stoppard-esque playwright Henry, prone to snobbery and lofty mansplaining while also dithering over his populist song choices for Desert Island Discs and hacking out screenplays to make alimony. Bel Powley is terrific as Annie, the younger actress who arrests his heart and attention. In a wordy drama, both are surprisingly physical: he shimmying in socked feet to Da Do Ron Ron Ron, she all eloquent elbows and ankles, seductive and exasperated.

True, an air of self-satisfaction hovers over the whole enterprise. This is a play which contains three other plays, and which also plays into and against the public image of actors and writers. Webster embraces the “meta” dimension, deploying a troupe of ebullient stage managers (almost the defining feature of post-Covid London theatre) to transform Peter MacKintosh’s stylish, stylised, deep blue set between scenes. This feels apt for a play concerned with how everything, from a romance to a pop song to a script, is put together.

And though over 40 years old, The Real Thing is surprisingly prescient. There’s a debate about the merits of analogue versus digital, admittedly pertaining to wristwatches. Stoppard foresaw the breaking down of ideas into soundbites and tweets till there’s “no philosophy that can’t be printed on a t-shirt”. The “political prisoner” Annie champions turns out to be a right-wing thug who desecrated the Cenotaph. Sound familiar?

Still, the play’s depiction of women as creatures to be idolised or distrusted is very much of its time, along with phrases like “having it off” and “chatting me up”. Susan Wokoma has fun with the part of Henry’s scathing first wife Charlotte, a functional, faithless character who mostly complains that her husband writes functional, faithless parts for her as an actress. Their daughter Debbie (Karise Yansen) is a mouthpiece for what Henry calls “persuasive nonsense” about sex.

It's impossible not to be carried away by the brio of the whole thing, though: the way the plays-within-the-play inform mesh and overlap; the joyous relish of words; the potent, romantic yearning at the core for something pure. Here, a script is famously likened to a cricket bat, engineered to send the ball of an idea soaring without apparent effort. The Real Thing is such a play, and Webster and his cast play a blinder with it.