THE REAL THING

Wordsmith Tom Stoppard's semiautobiographical romantic comedy wowed audiences on the West End and Broadway. This superbly performed audio version, recorded before an appreciative studio audience, does the same. Henry, a playwright known for his witty and cynical oeuvre, is in real life a romantic—an insecure one at that. The infidelities of Annie, the actress he loves, and her incomprehensible support for a thuggish Scottish radical force him to reexamine his idea of the "real thing" he yearns for. Particularly in the mouths of Simon Templeman, as Henry, and Carolyn Seymour, as Henry's first wife, the dialogue sparkles. As Annie, Joanne Whalley does a serviceable job but has two problems. She occasionally steps on Henry's laughs, and she doesn't vocally project the appeal that makes Henry's predicament so acute. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2009]