‘The River’ and ‘The Real Thing’ on Broadway

The charismatic Jackman is the main reason to see The River, Jez Butterworth’s cryptic new play. Staged by Ian Rickson in the intimate Circle in the Square, you’re only a few arm’s-lengths away from this magnetic star, and you’ll never tire of watching his riveting performance. As for the play itself, it’s a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (to quote Winston Churchill).

Set in a mountain cabin in parts unspecified, the play appears to be about fishing — at least that’s what consumes most of the conversation between the tall dark fisherman played by Jackman (he’s listed as “the Man” in the program) and his lovely young guest (“the Woman”), whom he’s invited to his remote spot for the sport (or possibly a darker purpose: it’s not clear.)

Don’t count on the dialogue — about fishing, poetry, the weather — to illuminate you. It doesn’t shed light on what’s really going on. Instead, take pleasure in watching Hugh Jackman fillet a fresh trout on stage, chop fennel and carrots, and bake it all in a potbellied stove. It’s a fascinating theatrical experience and a revelatory one, too. This is a man who knows what he wants and knows how to go about it with skill and precision.

After they consume the fish and the wine, the Man asks the Woman to go into the bedroom to search for a mysterious, hidden object. At last, we think, something will “happen,” and the play’s purpose will be revealed. But when she returns, she’s not “the Woman”, she’s the “Other Woman,” a new character altogether.

And so it goes, back and forth, in this baffling three-character play whose plot I won’t spoil. Suffice it to say, The River becomes a menacing Pinteresque parable about getting what you want in love, or not getting it, as you keep reaching, ruthlessly and methodically, for perfection.

Searching for perfect love

Like Jackman’s Man, Ewan McGregor’s Henry is searching for perfect love — or, as Tom Stoppard calls it, “the real thing.” We know a little more about Henry than we do about the Man: Henry is a playwright, and his favorite topic is love. In fact, Stoppard’s play opens with a scene from Henry’s play about marital infidelity, a topic that Henry knows a lot about in real life (from his adulterous wife Charlotte, played by the starchy Cynthia Nixon).

The Real Thing is an appealing drawing-room comedy of manners and morals, and Stoppard’s witty dialogue scintillates in the style of Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward. It’s one of Stoppard’s most realistic works, in contrast to his “idea” plays (Arcadia, The Invention of Love), his philosophical vaudevilles (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties) or his history plays (the Coast of Utopia trilogy).

It’s also a play that I find very sad. The characters keep switching partners in their endless pursuit of “the real thing.” They’re superficial and self-absorbed, by their own admission, and they hurt each other in the process of that pursuit. “Find a corner of yourself that doesn’t care about me,” says Henry’s new love Annie, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s just revealed to the crestfallen Henry that she’s having an affair, too. Is “the real thing” obtainable? Stoppard’s characters wouldn’t know it, even if they had it.

Director Gold’s clever choice of music underscores Stoppard’s theme of the idealization of true love. Between each scene, the cast sings a series of '60s/'70s songs: "I’m into Something Good,” “There’s a Kind of Hush,” “Be My Baby,” “God Only Knows,” etc. The naive love songs keep these lost characters going, smiling in quiet desperation.

Keep hope

Meanwhile, don’t lose hope. There is one love story this season that knows what it’s about. It’s a true one, and it’s to be found in The Theory of Everything, the new biopic about the physicist Stephen Hawking. Unlike the dashing Messrs. McGregor and Jackman, Eddie Redmayne, the actor who plays this world-renowned British scientist, spends almost the entire film in a wheelchair. Hawking suffered from motor neuron (“Lou Gehrig’s”) disease, and his accomplishments, given this overwhelming handicap, are positively astounding.

But scientific history is not the thrust of this deeply moving film. Instead, screenwriter Anthony McCarten focuses on the relationship between Hawking and his wife Jane (Felicity Jones). Jane married Hawking knowing full well that he was diagnosed with the disease at 21 (note: he was given two years to live and is still alive today). The screenplay suggests that Jane’s unflagging courage and devotion kept Hawking alive, focused, and productive despite unimaginable obstacles. Though he ultimately became paralyzed and speechless, they managed to have three children together, and Hawking went on to write his definitive study, A Brief History of Time.

Although some feel the story has been sentimentalized in this film, I disagree. The facts are the facts, and the power of their abiding love as well as the difficulties they encountered in their relationship are revealed with candor and without judgment.

Now if that’s not love, actually, what is?

Above right: Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Real Thing. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Above left: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything.