If your love life feels like a fake-news house of cards, whose walls are decorated with infidelity and questionable authenticity, and is controlled by maniacal forces — the human heart, and all its fallibility — then the Aurora Theatre Company’s production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing is, well, like the real thing. The Tony Award-winning play, which opens in previews January 27, is driven by an emotional matrix, revealed in a play-within-a-play construct. There’s playwright Henry, who is unhappily married to Charlotte. And there’s Max, an English architect character in Henry’s play, who is married to the fictitious Charlotte. The flip-flop realities offer a perfect juggling act for the deft direction of Timothy Near, who guides the production, and in 2016 also directed Aurora’s presentation of Athol Fugard’s well-regarded Master Harold … and the Boys. Expect to be moved, and motivated to order red roses for your significant other — or for yourself, should love’s fickle maneuvering exceed your grasp.
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