The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress and member of a group fighting to free Brodie, a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest.

She has been conducting an ongoing affair with Henry while also working as an activist for Brodie, a soldier who was arrested and imprisoned for setting fire to a wreath at the Cenotaph.

[3] Setting: London in 1982 In the first scene, Max accuses his distant and travelling wife, Charlotte, of adultery.

The audience is gradually led to realize that Charlotte is an actress, and the first scene was her performance in a play that Henry, her husband, wrote.

Annie is a devoted activist on behalf of an imprisoned soldier, Brodie, who has been arrested for setting fire to the wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

But when Annie and Henry are left alone, the scene reveals that their fight was also a performance: they are having an affair, and she agrees to meet him later on the pretext of visiting Brodie in prison.

Henry gently cautions the girl against his own vice of making clever phrases for their own sake, but he is shaken by her cynicism.

Henry returns home in a frenzy of jealousy and ransacks his and Annie's apartment searching for evidence of infidelity.

He is highly critical of Henry's ghost work on his television play, and makes several crass comments about Annie.

There are a number of parallels between Stoppard and his main character: both are middle-aged playwrights known for their exact use of language; both express doubts about Marxism and the politics of the left and both undertake work outside the theatre to keep up their comfortable lifestyles and pay alimony to their ex-wives.

With these similarities established, it is only a small step to compare Henry's fictional situation with that of his creator: both men take up with another man's wife and find happiness, while retaining a strong relationship with their children.

Close and Irons both won Tonys for their roles, as did Christine Baranski for her featured performance as Charlotte.

Supporting players during the play's run on Broadway included Peter Gallagher, Simon Jones, D.W. Moffett, Steven Weber, Cynthia Nixon, and Yeardley Smith.

Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal starred as Henry and Annie, with Josh Hamilton as Max and Cynthia Nixon, who played the role of Debbie in the original Broadway production, as Charlotte.