Tom Stoppard's work often combines his own obsessions on the nature of reality, human relations and other terribly complicated things, like human emotions. Such is the case with The Real Thing, a tale of a playwright whose relationship goes south—his relationship , that is, with the wife of an actor starring in a play with the writer's own wife. There's a number of scenes that parallel earlier scenes, and characters paralleling other characters, and more. —Zack Smith