Anna Mackmin returns to The Old Vic to direct Toby Stephens in Tom Stoppard's multi-award winning modern classic The Real Thing, opening on Wednesday 21 April 2010, with previews from
10 April.
Henry (Toby Stephens) is a successful and talented playwright married to Charlotte, an actress playing the lead in his current play about adultery. Her co-star and friend Max, is married to Annie, also an actor. Henry and Annie have fallen in love but is it any more real than the subjects in Henry's play? As the story unravels, Henry discovers that love - ‘the real thing' - can be unpredictable and painful. Deeply moving and startlingly funny, this razor sharp drama brilliantly examines the complex nature of love, art and reality.
The Real Thing was last staged in the West End in 2000 after transferring from the Donmar Warehouse. The production starred Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle as Henry and Annie, both of
whom won Tony awards when the play subsequently transferred to Broadway.
Tom Stoppard's first stage play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was produced at
The Old Vic in 1967, made the playwright an overnight sensation, followed in London and New York
by Jumpers, The Real Inspector Hound, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Dirty Linen,
Night and Day, The Real Thing, Artist Descending a Staircase, Hapgood, Arcadia, The Invention of
Love, his trilogy The Coast of Utopia (which won seven Tony Awards) and Rock ‘n' Roll (Tony Award
nomination for Best Play). His translations and adaptations include The Seagull, Undiscovered
Country, On the Razzle, Rough Crossing, Henry IV, Heroes and The House of Bernarda Alba. Film
scripts as writer and co-writer include Shakespeare in Love (which won him Academy and BAFTA
awards), Enigma, Brazil, and Empire of the Sun. Stoppard directed his own screenplay of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. He is the recipient of four Tony Awards, four Critics' Circle Awards, seven Evening Standard Awards, and an Olivier, Academy and BAFTA Award. Sir Tom Stoppard was knighted for Services to the Arts in 1997 and in 2000 was bestowed with the Royal Order of Merit, the most prestigious British accolade of all for a writer.
Toby Stephens was most recently seen on stage in A Doll's House (Donmar) and The Country Wife
directed by Jonathan Kent (Theatre Royal Haymarket). Other stage credits include Peter Hall's
production of Tartuffe at the Playhouse Theatre, Phedre (Almeida and Brooklyn Academy of Music),
Betrayal (Donmar) and A Streetcar Named Desire (Theatre Royal Haymarket). Work at the RSC
includes Hamlet, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Antony and Cleopatra,
Wallenstein, All's Well That Ends Well and Coriolanus (for which he was awarded the Sir John Gielgud prize for Best Actor and the Ian Charleson Award). Toby is also a versatile television and film actor. His television credits include the BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre, Cambridge Spies, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wired, Vexed and The Camomile Lawn. Film work includes Severance, Orlando, Die Another Day and The Great Gatsby.
In 2009, Anna Mackmin directed the critically acclaimed ‘in the round' production of Dancing at
Lughnasa at The Old Vic. Previous directorial credits include Brian Friel's new version of Hedda Gabler (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Catherine Tate in her stage debut in Under The Blue Sky, David Storey's In Celebration with Orlando Bloom (Duke of York's), Dying for It (Almeida), Ghosts (The Gate) and Burn/Citizenship/Chatroom (National). Anna is currently in rehearsals for Really Old, Like Forty Five, a new play by Tamsin Oglesby, which opens in January 2010 at the National.
