Ifeka is a Ph.D. specializing in American and British literature. In this essay she argues that in The Real Thing Stoppard takes issue with contemporary pressures to politicize art. Ifeka assesses the persuasiveness of his attack.

Critics seized upon The Real Thing as if it were a rainstorm in a drought, proclaiming that Stoppard had at last written a play with real characters who experienced human emotions. Precisely why they should be so enthusiastic about the playwright's tardy conversion to realism when they once enthusiastically applauded his innovative Absurdism is not clear; nor is it clear why Stoppard has been burdened with the ridiculous smear that his writing was, up until he supposedly proved otherwise in The Real Thing, cold and unemotional.

Stoppard had always been a playwright whose intellectual curiosity mirrored his passion for language; he had not been particularly interested in squashing his energy...