Old Vic, London
Passion and art are dissected in tricksy style in a production that manages to wrongfoot the audience
There are several circularities drawn around what is real and what is part of a fiction in Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play about love and the art of playwriting. They come right from the off, in an opening scene with a husband discovering a wife’s affair.
The cuckold is in fact an actor, Max (Oliver Johnstone), playing a part opposite Charlotte (Susan Wokoma), in a play within this play that is written by the latter’s husband, Henry (James McArdle).