Simon Phillips & Johnny Carr On How To Know When You've Found 'The Real Thing'

In the year 2019, some timeless questions still need answering. What exactly is true love? How can you know the real thing when you see it? And, why should you leave the comfort of your home, your couch, your Netflix, and go see some theatre?

Fortunately for us, Sydney Theatre Company is putting on a play that grapples with some of these questions, the Tom Stoppard classic, The Real Thing. But just because this play discusses some important questions, does it really have the right answers? 

Johnny Carr, the lead actor, believes that The Real Thing has something meaningful to say about love. “It’s not just witty dialogue and, you know, people who are snappily dressed,” he notes. “There’s a real fucking heart to this piece. It’s deeply funny and deeply moving."

“[Stoppard is] a very witty, intellectual kind of playwright,” he says. “And I think he was kind of criticised for that in some ways. [People] saying that, like, they weren’t sure if he could represent more human elements of us, like love. And then he wrote this play.”  

The Real Thing has a reputation for being semi-autobiographical; the story of an eloquent playwright who’s having a self-destructive affair. 

“It seems to speak from his heart so often,” says director Simon Phillips. “It’s really one of those things where you just need to let the autobiographical nature be. And trust he is a writer. And that he turned his own feelings into a play.” 

Phillips says he’s actually met Stoppard on several occasions. “I wouldn’t pretend to know him well, but I have a certain knowledge of him. And I find that sits in my head as I’m working on this play.”

But what exactly does this production have to say about love? The play talks about how finding true love, finding the real thing, is more complex than what we’re told. 

“How can we know the real thing when we see it?” Carr asks. “I don’t know if we can know it when we see it… I think when people tell us the idea that, ‘We just know,’ I think we have been sold a lemon.”

“It really is a play that’s trying to articulate what it feels like to be in love,” Phillips says. “The real thing is profound and deep and not pure. Not unadulterated love, it’s not unqualified, it’s not any of those things. But it is real.”

Carr, who plays the playwright Henry, stresses that this exploration of love is worth leaving the house and the Netflix for. “Just come. Put down the bloody remote. I mean, it’ll be a cracking night in the theatre. It will be highly entertaining. It’s more than what you think.”

The Real Thing is set in London in 1982, giving the staging a distinctly ’80s aesthetic, but not in a Stranger Things, ‘Remember this?!?’ kind of way. Phillips has made these elements true to the play – they are honest yet restrained. 

“We don’t want the audience to sit there all night feeling like it’s some kind of hysterical jaunt down 1980s fashions,” he says. “It’s not a show-offy set. It’s not a set that’s an event in and of itself. It’s there to support the scenario that the actors are in.” 

The answers to those timeless questions about the nature of love are often messy, dense, and difficult to unpack. It seems Stoppard knew this better than most. Both Phillips and Carr say they’re excited to share such a nuanced story about love with an audience.

“It is a play that requires you to listen,” says Phillips. “It doesn’t hand it to you on a plate… So I always feel like, for me, it hits me quite personally, quite often. I hope it’ll do the same for other people.”

“It needs to be shared in the flesh,” Carr proclaims. “It’s about human connection, and I think we need humans there to connect with... Aw, that was good. Can you keep that in?”