We went last night to see Tom Stoppard's play "The Real Thing" done by American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. I should mention up front that I'm a huge Stoppard fan, having been won over by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of "Rough Crossing" several years ago.
Like all his work, this play is self-referential and multi-layered. A play-within-a-play in the very first scene fits perfectly with the main theme of trying to work out when a relationship is The Real Thing. His use of symmetrical scenes in which lovers confront each other lends weight and rhythm to the interlocking stories of theatre people trying to make sense of their intertwingled professional and personal lives.
During the second half I was sure he was setting us up for another devastatingly sad ending as in his play "Arcadia", but instead he gives us a quiet, faintly optimistic one, hinting that Stoppard, like his playwright main character, is quite a romantic.
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