When Tom Stoppard wrote The Real Thing three decades ago he was probably Britain’s top playwright and his greatest work is long overdue a revival.
Time doesn’t always treat ‘80s classics kindly as those of us who recently had to sit through Caryl Churchill’s terribly dated Top Girls can readily testify.
But according to Simon Scardfield who plays Max this work has still the test of time.
“I think although Churchill is always fun to play this is a more timeless work because she is politically engaged with the sexual and politics of the time in a way Stoppard isn’t.
“One context of the play is an anti nuclear demonstration in a tangential way but for people of my age – I’m 40 odd – it’s got a nice flavour to it, and whiff of nostalgia about it.
“In various Stoppardian ways it’s real a powerhouse work that you are really glued to, and it’s basically about real life which was the fascination for me. It’s like the mechanism of a clock in the way it is so precise.”
The Real Thing is a play about honesty using the old stand by of a play within a play to make the audience think about what is real and what is imagined. For Simon at heart it is a simple universal theme that holds together Stoppard’s savage verbal battle between middle class eggheads.
“It’s about love actually, which Stoppard avoids in a lot of his plays as they are such clever things, and he doesn’t always take that matter head on.
“But this play is about attitudes and how we make each other miserable, and ourselves as well, and make compromises, so it is a messy play in that sense. There’s blood on the floor by the end of it.
“There is enormous damage you can do each other in those circumstances and they do.”
Don’t go along expecting physical comedy or acrobatics as Stoppard’s work is the very epitome of metropolitan wordplay full of intellectual smoke and mirrors.
“That’s the interesting thing, if you were to video it and play it back you would see people in a room talking, and you’d wonder what was interesting about it.
“There’s no juggling, clowns or fireworks, but once you get behind the story it is people really knocking lumps off each other – sometimes intentionally and sometimes not – it’s an emotional boxing match done with scalpels.
“These people are very clever, one in particular, and know each very well so it is done with real precision.”
Over the years Stoppard’s mastery of structure and language has attracted some big names including Glenn Close and Jeremy irons who opened The Real Thing on Broadway
“I don’t feel so cowed by that as there won’t be many people who saw it on Broadway who will see this production if any and I’ve got used to the idea by now that whatever you are doing you have to make it real.
“To me the draw of doing this was that I’d be doing Shakespeare for a long time where you were filling all sorts of different shoes and this is really different. I spent a lot of time in an all male company called Propeller reciting Shakespeare in a frock and here we are in modern a play with issues we can all recognise which is nice.”
Stoppard is one of the few playwrights so famous he is known by his surname, but he made his reputation challenging perceptions especially about good and evil.
“I think it is the sign of a really good play when there are no goodies and baddies, when you don’t know who you’re backing or rooting for.
“In Shakespeare you get that very clearly but with Stoppard one person sticks passionately with the beliefs they have and you’re with them. Then the other person speaks and you can see that too so you don’t where to put yourself which makes for a really involving experience for the audience.
“You never know which way to jump as you want both to be right, but it can’t because the world is much more complicated than that.”
• The Real Thing runs from May 4 to May 26 and tickets can be booked by calling West Yorkshire Playhouse Box Office on 0113 213 7700 or by visiting www.wyp.org.uk