Arcadia

I was really stuck in a rut for a week or two there, really disliking everything I saw, starting to wonder whether it was what I was seeing or whether it was just me, some bad mood I was in that I didn't actually realize I was in. Which doesn't make any sense, but the shows were starting to feel really bleak. And then came Arcadia.

I've read some of Tom Stoppard's plays before, but I'd never seen one until this week. I know his work is often criticized for being overly intellectual and under-developed emotionally. I also knew that there were those who felt Arcadia was particularly confusing as it travels back and forth between the early 19th Century and the present day featuring frequent tangents about English garden design, mathematical theories, and debates on the merits of classicism versus romanticism. But as crisply and cleanly and beautifully presented on Broadway right now, it was, to me, blissful.

In 1809, a wealthy family's daughter is tutored by a bit of a cad who can talk himself out of almost anything. Nearly two centuries later, two historians butt heads in the same estate, Sidley Park, trying to establish whether or not Lord Byron had ever been there and whether he might have fought a duel, killing a young poet.

There's really no satisfying way to summarize the play. On the one hand, we're presented with what happened at Sidley Park, and on the other we watch historians truly bungle the evidence. And along the way, we meet a dozen of the richest, most entertaining characters on stage right now--the teenage girl who might have been a mathematical genius ahead of her time, the poet whose wife can't stop sleeping with the tutor, the celebrated author, the critic who keeps trying to debunk her, and a man of science who refuses to believe that a 13-year-old might actually have been the first to establish a theory he is still trying to prove.

As I write this, I feel like I'm only doing it a disservice. The play is so tight and thoughtful and intelligent (and funny!) that it's pleasures almost defy simple explanation. I'll say this: Billy Crudup originated the role of the tutor in the first Broadway production and now gets to try on the present-day historian. He makes him such a delightful tool, all pomp and bragadoccio, that one delights in knowing how off the real story he really is. Bel Powley is the young genius,Thomasina, a role that seems like it would be a nightmare to cast--how many teenagers are there who could pull of being a young genius who is still charming and naive? She's wonderful in the part. And Tom Riley as the delightfully named Septimus Hodge is giving an incredibly funny performance that doesn't miss the deeper human notes. The whole cast is glorious, from large role to small, including really winning turns by Grace Gummer and David Turner who deliver the goods in almost bit parts.

My favorite moment was Thomasina's breakdown over the loss of the library at Alexandria: how could we go on, she wondered, knowing how much knowledge and beauty and literature was lost to fire. Septimus' attempt to comfort her, to make peace with what was lost and how it matters in the grand scheme of time, made me tear up just a little. And even that doesn't compare to a later speech comparing the concept of an afterlife to having the answers in the back of a book--where's the satisfaction of puzzling something out if you know for sure you'll even get the answer. It's the puzzling that counts. Which is also true of the play. Letting the mysteries of it wash over you and waiting for the pieces to come together is deeply satisfying and tremendously rewarding. I loved the whole thing. I'm only disappointed that I don't feel as if I can better capture it.

Oh, but I'll still make two complaints: first, the show has the ugliest artwork I've seen in a longtime. Seriously--that Playbill cover: what were they thinking?? And second, every time someone entered or exited through the central upstage doors, they had to cross the loudest and squeakiest section of stage I've ever heard. Other than that: all was perfect.