A darkly romantic tale by an award-winning stage and screen writer opens at Silo Theatre on 31 August.

Starring Claire Chitham, Theresa Healey and Stephen Lovatt, The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Shakespeare in Love) explores art, sex, sacrifice, and the politics of love. A darkly romantic tale by an award-winning stage and screen writer opens at Silo Theatre on 31 August.

Starring Claire Chitham, Theresa Healey and Stephen Lovatt, The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Shakespeare in Love) explores art, sex, sacrifice, and the politics of love.Henry (Stephen Lovatt) is a playwright. Afflicted by detachment and obsessed with pop music, he's always ready to finish other people's sentences with an apposite witticism. Despite this, he continues to struggle to make sense of that most elusive of human emotions - love.

When an incandescent actress (Claire Chitham) casts him as the philandering husband, he's forced to enact a situation that he's previously been content merely to write about. Suddenly, sophistication can't save him, jealousy, tenderness and vulnerability aren't merely his dramatic stock in trade. Genuinely powerful forces that obstruct rational thought and make him undignified, delicate and ultimately, human.

The Real Thing is loosely autobiographical and uses a playful theatrical structure which teases the audience into considering what is reality and what is art.

When: 31 August - 29 September 2007
Where: Silo Theatre, Lower Greys Avenue, Auckland
Bookings: Ticketmaster 09 970 9700

24/7/07