Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play The Real Thing pulses with exhilarating ideas about how to really love and how to write about love, about good writing, propaganda, and the sacred power of words. It discusses ‘the real thing’ not only in love but in politics and music, and it plays clever metatheatrical games with the theme of reality and artifice.

Stoppard and probing ideas go hand in hand, of course. His plays embrace complex themes and concepts about everything from Dadaism to English landscape gardening. But while always thrillingly smart, many of his early dramas were perceived as impersonal, and lacking in humanity.

Johnny Carr and Geraldine Hakewill. Photograph © Lisa Tomasetti

The Real Thing was famously the first play where Stoppard wrote from the heart about love, pairing his customary cerebral panache with genuine emotion. Times have changed, views have slightly shifted, and a few of Henry’s comments do sound a bit dated now, but the emotion at the heart of the play still rings very true in this superb Sydney Theatre Company production directed by Simon Phillips.

Entering the theatre, the stage looks surprisingly bland, with a fawn, panelled wall along the back and...