The Guardian: Tom Stoppard: 'I'm the crank in the bus queue'

Mark Lawson has written a very satisfying article about Mr. Stoppard in anticipation of the London revival of The Real Thing.  Should it be of interest to you, you can see what will surely be an inspired production of the very same play in Livermore, California.   (And you can read more about that here.)

Here are just a couple of teaser quotes from Mr. Lawson's story which I highly recommend you read here.

He also does uncredited script-doctoring on Hollywood movies, "about once a year": most recently he worked on Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum. "The second reason for doing it is that you get to work with people you admire. The first reason, of course, is that it's overpaid."

What he craves is a new play. By his age (72), Beckett and Pinter were content with one-acts and fragments; Stoppard is still aiming for two acts and three hours, interval drinks and last-train tickets. Inspiration, though, is intermittent and mercurial. 

The Real Thing occupies a pivotal position in Stoppard's output. It was the work that converted those who had found the plays in the first phase of his career – Rosencrantz, Jumpers, Travesties – too coldly intellectual in their spinning-off from literary, philosophical or political history. Stoppard was congratulated on his first drama of the heart rather than the head, although a few admirers regretted this shift in emphasis.

Amazingly, just today I realized I have two different audio productions of The Real Thing.   I've written before about the production by the Los Angeles Theatre Works, but then, while I was combing and grooming my files, I found a different production by the BBC.  ...More to come on this.