Nobody Does It Better Tom Stoppard’S Genius Revealed In ‘Arcadia’
While the musical-extravaganza crowd is salivating over the prospect of a singing phantom in a mask next February, some of us are more excited by the prospect of Tom Stoppard at his creative peak.
That’s what we can expect with the opening of Stoppard’s 1993 “Arcadia” on Friday at the Interplayers Ensemble. This funny and intelligent meditation on Lord Byron, Sir Isaac Newton, English gardens and “carnal embrace” is one of Stoppard’s finest plays, which automatically makes it one of the finest contemporary plays, period.
Stoppard is “one of the more brilliant and accessible modern English playwrights,” as the “Oxford Companion to American Theatre” puts it. Anyone who cares about theater-as-literature has known this since Stoppard burst on the scene with 1967’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” followed by such high-water marks as “The Real Inspector Hound,” “Jumpers” and “The Real Thing.”
The mass market learned the same thing last year, when Stoppard won an Oscar for co-writing “Shakespeare In Love,” full of wit and wordplay and erudition. That movie might be considered Stoppard Lite, except that even in his most serious theatrical work, Stoppard is rarely heavy.
No matter how serious the theme, Stoppard’s “astonishing verbal dexterity” (as the “Oxford Companion to the Theatre” puts it), gives his plays a delightful comic edge.
“Arcadia” is a textbook example of Stoppard’s knack for taking esoteric subjects and weaving them into something sparkling. It is also a textbook example of his knack for taking a low subject and turning it into high art.
“Only an Englishman could write a play about sexual passion and sublimate it in three hours of witty discourse on the second law of thermodynamics, the history of British landscape gardening, the elusive movements of Lord Byron, and the advent of the mathematical revolution known as chaos theory,” wrote Frank Rich of The New York Times in his 1993 “Arcadia” review. “And probably no Englishman could write such a play better than Tom Stoppard.”
“Arcadia” takes place in two eras at the same Derbyshire Country estate. The play opens, memorably, in 1809 with a 13-year-old girl asking, “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?”
“Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef,” replies Septimus.
These characters engage in witty discussions of mathematics, garden design and their unusual neighbor, the young Lord Byron.
The other era is the present, and it features historical researchers trying to plumb the mysteries of what Lord Byron was doing in this Derbyshire estate back in 1809. How the second law of thermodynamics and chaos theory fits into this, you’ll have to discover for yourself.
Yet the play is actually about a more understandable kind of gravitational pull, the pull between lovers. “Arcadia” approaches the subject from a slightly more intellectual standpoint than, say, “Dawson’s Creek.”
The result was Stoppard’s biggest London hit and a respectable run on Broadway soon afterward. His latest play, “The Invention of Love,” is on its way to New York this season.
The Interplayers production of “Arcadia” is directed by co-founder Joan Welch. The cast includes a number of Interplayers veterans, including Erin Merritt, Tony Mason, Susan Mansefield, Jane Fellows, Phelps L’Hommedieu, Steven L. Barron, Colin O’Conner, Kasey Kilgore and Gary Pierce. Newcomers include Christopher Zinovitch, Brenna Holcomb and Paul Gillon.
This sidebar appeared with the story: `ARCADIA’ “ARCADIA” OPENS FRIDAY AT INTERPLAYERS ENSEMBLE, AND CONTINUES THROUGH OCT. 9. FRIDAY AND SATURDAY PERFORMANCES ARE AT 8 P.M., AND TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY PERFORMANCES ARE AT 7:30 P.M. MATINEES ARE AT 2 P.M. ON SEPT. 18, 22 AND 25. TICKETS ARE $17.45 AND $15.10 FOR EVENING PERFORMANCES, $13.90 FOR MATINEES. THIS FRIDAY’S SHOW IS A DISCOUNTED PERFORMANCE, $13.90. TICKETS FOR PATRONS UNDER 25 ARE $10 FOR ANY PERFORMANCE. CALL 455-PLAY.