As I've written before here, it was one of the great blessings of my life to see the original productions of The Real Thing in both London and New York. In New York, the lead was played by Jeremy Irons who was still floating in the rarefied air of fame blown up by Brideshead Revisited. I think he did a terrific job but thought Roger Rees in the West End was the better of the two. Here's a story from the Times about Roger Rees' return to the West End in a production of Waiting for Godot.
“I should have stayed there and become a big something,” he says now. “But what I like to do is work a lot and so I came back.” Success did give him the chance to play Hamlet for the RSC. He was a big enough name to be cast as the alter ego of Tom Stoppard in the original production of The Real Thing. “I remember my mum and me taking a photograph of the Strand Theatre. It said, ‘Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees in The Real Thing’.” All these years later, it seems that he can’t quite believe that his name was once in lights in the West End.
Most of the article focuses on Rees' leaving of London and his "twenty year exile in the in the US." --I know i was quite pleased when he became a recurring character on The West Wing. Anyway, here's a link to the article.
