Jarethan said: :I did love the original Real Thing and the revival with Stephen Dilate and Jennifer Ehle...I think a bad production of The Real Thing is just that...a bad production of a solid play. I loved the original production of The Heidi Chronicles, but have concluded that the play was simply of its time and has not aged well.:
Although I dissented on the original Real Thing and Heidi, finding the first painful and the second only somewhat enjoyable with no there there, I agree that revivals often change our view of plays, for better or for worse.
And nowhere for me is this better illustrated than Real Thing, which I have seen in three different Broadway productions.
The problem for me with the original production was that I disliked Irons and Close so much that I couldn't see that there might be a good play there. I found them both stereotypical and boring. Irons the full of himself success writer and Close the very actory actor. I didn't care about them.
The first Broadway revival changed all of that for me largely because whereas I found irons and Close predictable, boring and unlikeable, Dillane and Ehle, in performances I will never forget, were exciting, recognizable human beings AND individuals with real humility. The stars were beyond likeable - I fell in love with both of their characters. And because of that the play moved me very much.
The less said about the last revival the better. It was simply a disaster - but not because the play is bad. Nor because it was dated.
Putting all of this together - and fully owning that I'm certainly in the minority when it comes to the original production of Real Thing - the way we feel about even good plays can depend largely on the way we felel about how they are produced, directed, designed and acted. And while we all obviously know that, sometimes that simple truth gets buried - simply because the merits of a "text" are typically obfuscated for us by execution that fails to impress us or, worse, negatively impresses us.
The current revival of Three Tall Women is a revelation for me, not because I didn't previously like the play. I did. Not because I didn't like the original production. I did, quite a lot actually. But because I had no idea how exceptionally fine a work it is until now thanks to everything that is now happening over at the Golden. (that, and also perhaps because I'm now a B, not the C I was when I first saw the play).
Updated On: 4/6/18 at 09:27 AM
.jpg?format=auto&width=365)
