Now an old man, Carr remembers and misremembers his role as Algernon as Oscar Wilde’s characters wander into his mind. Stoppard came up with the idea while reading a biography of Joyce and began to imagine bringing him together with two other thinkers of the day: Russian revolutionary Lenin and dadaist Tristan Tzara. Vaudeville, poetry and farce collide to consider art and politics in Stoppard’s 1974 comedy about Henry Carr, a real-life British diplomat and actor who starred in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest by James Joyce. As he has been known to do, Stoppard drew on his own experiences as a theatre critic to write the play. While the play goes on, theatre critics Moon and Birdboot discuss what they will write about it, often veering off into extended tangents about their own lives, which become intertwined with the mystery unfolding on stage. The setting of this one-act comedy is a play-within-a-play, which is itself a parody of an Agatha Christie style whodunnit. One morning in early spring, a group is gathered in the drawing room of Lady Muldoon’s house. Despite adopting the play-within-a-play motif, The Real Thing is a significantly quieter episode than other works, investigating the nature of honesty, love and artistry. Adding even more layers, he ended up in a relationship with Felicity Kendal, who played the woman that Henry has an affair with in the play.

For starters, he and the main character Henry are both playwrights in the same time of life, who have long-lasting affairs. There is no shortage of parallels between Stoppard’s own life and the plot of The Real Thing. Set in a country house, the story follows a teenage girl in 1809 and a writer and researcher in Stoppard’s present, looking to uncover the truth of what happened to the house’s past occupants. That’s why it’s the perfect text for A Level English students – and often cited as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. Stoppard presents some mind-bendingly complex ideas next to story of love, mystery and tragedy.

Two time-periods intersect bringing two philosophies for the characters to discuss: 19th-century romanticism and 20th-century chaos.

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1966 play by tom stoppard