The Real Thing: Stoppard revival is 'witty' and 'wise'

London's autumn season is bookended by "weighty Stoppards", said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph . In December, "The Invention of Love" (1997), Sir Tom's erudite portrait of A.E. Housman, is being revived at the Hampstead Theatre. But first we have this "cleverly engaging" – if "not wholly lovable" – staging of "The Real Thing" (1982), one of his most "accessible and emotionally resonant successes".

This "witty", twisty play has as its central character a distinctly Stoppard-like playwright named Henry, said Will Lloyd in The Sunday Times . Henry's actress wife, Charlotte, is starring in his latest play as a woman who is suspected of cheating on her husband. But Henry has left her for a younger actress, Annie, whose actor husband has been cast in Henry's play as the possible cuckold. Meanwhile Annie, alas, seems to be falling for another actor, named Billy. "Got that? Nobody ever said affairs of the heart were straightforward."

"The Real Thing" is one of Stoppard's most popular plays, said Sarah Crompton on What's on Stage : it has "all the whirling wit of his early work", and its subject is "the most important in the world – what it means to love and be loved". At the heart of Max Webster's sophisticated revival is a "sensational performance" from James McArdle, who beautifully conveys both Henry's "monstrous self-satisfaction and his deep and abiding confusion".

Bel Powley has a "lovely, lithe quality as the impetuous Annie, who gradually carves out her own sense of self", said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times . And though the "other characters are underwritten – partly a function of the play's interest in Henry's solipsism" – Oliver Johnstone and Susan Wokoma as the other spouses are also superb.

I found this production a little "stodgy", said Alice Saville in The Independent – not aided by some "declamatory" acting. It is a bit effortful at first, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times . But "the longer it goes on", the more it finds a "plangent tone where the witty, the wise and the wounded are forever colliding".

Old Vic, London SE1. Until 26 October