The Real Thing is making me smarter. How to describe the sensation... I'm articulating my thoughts in ways in which I haven't had the ability to phrase them before. Even writing this is painstaking as it's nowhere close to the level of dialogue coming out of my mouth at daily rehearsals or in the shower or in my car as people witness my perceived lunacy from their narrow rearview mirrors. I do talk to myself sometimes though. I'm not passing Stoppard nuggets off as my own, but they're supplementing my vocabulary with more precise wordings and more concise scenarios. A Critical Theory class could spend a semester on this play and only make it halfway through.
So.
My first several trips through The Real Thing were frustrating. I didn't find it funny, and I felt like Stoppard was writing in the vein of John Updike where characters use Latin, French, classical music and knowledge of historical theatre to let us know that John Updike knows Latin, French, classical music and historical theatre. I've realized that while Stoppard is grossly intellectual, he's not pretentious. The circularity, the repeated language, the repeated movement, they hit too flawlessy to be coincidences. Every intretextual reference is seeping with plots that relate to Stoppards own scenes. Where as Updike put one of his own stories first in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, (like T.O screaming "I love me some me!" at television cameras) Stoppard infiltrates his art less blatantly. Therefore I like him more. We here across the pond are awed by pompous personalities and publicly self-indulgent behavior. While The Real Thing's Henry can be condescendingly brilliant, I don't think Stoppard is pretentious. Unless writing incredible plays is pretentious.
I've gone off again.