Scottish actor Ewan McGregor will make his Broadway debut starring in “The Real Thing,” a play by Tom Stoppard about love and marriage.
A press release from Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) announced that McGregor will star as Henry in Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning play, which will be directed by Sam Gold.
“The Real Thing” will begin preview performances on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014 and open officially on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014 at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway for a limited engagement through Jan. 4, 2015.
McGregor recently wrapped production on “Jane’s Got a Gun” and is currently filming “Mortdecai” opposite Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow. He’ll next be in John Wells’ film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play “August: Osage County,” set for release Dec. 24 and which is getting lots of Oscar buzz.
Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” premiered on Nov. 16, 1982 at The Strand Theatre in London and came to Broadway in 1984 where it received the Tony for Best Play. This was a memorable production starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close that I was lucky enough to catch.
McGregor will play Henry, a playwright not so happily married to Charlotte, the lead actress in his play about a marriage on the verge of collapse. Henry embarks on an affair with their friend Annie, which threatens to destroy his own marriage, in a scenario where life imitates art and where Henry agonizes whether their love is fiction or the real thing.
Along the way, the brilliant playwright scrutinizes relationships, fidelity, and passion and how it affects our perception of love. Like all of Stoppard’s work, there’s a lot of verbal jousting and clever and challenging dialogue. It will be interesting to watch McGregor, so terrific in last year’s “The Impossible,” display another facet of his acting range. His co-stars for “The Real Thing” have not yet been cast.
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