With the world in flux, the stage is set for a remounting of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia now taking place
at the Folger Theater (extended to 6/21). Directed with a modern and upbeat tempo by Aaron Posner - the production goes
for the laughs and gets them with Monty Pythonish humor and over-the-top deliveries.
If you've never seen
the play a brief summary is in order. Arcadia unfolds in parallel worlds, in two time periods (1809 and
the present), which are performed alternately in six separate scenes and combined simultaneously in the seventh (A-B-A-B then
B-A-C). The play explores the dichotomies that occur between the classical and romantic sensibilities in general
and Newtonian and modern physics in particular. It is a detective story, part whodunit and part literary and scientific investigation.
The biggest character in the play will never appear - Lord Byron - but his presence will loom large throughout. Strong female
characters dominate the action - the fathers in each period are offstage - and men are either given the boot or left holding
the bag.
The play specifically looks at the implications of entropy (the second law of thermodynamics), whereby all
matter is in a state of losing energy, winding down, as it moves forward in time. This scientific principle is
employed as a metaphor for declining fortunes in artistic movements, family fortunes, relationships, and life. Consideration
is also given to dynamic, nonlinear systems - chaos - where small changes can have big, non-predictable outcomes - and fractals
- where nature can be modeled mathematically. These too inform the characters and action of the play. There are
many scientific terms and ideas tossed out. I would go to Folger's website (http://www.folder.edu/) and check them out, or Google them; and while I would concur with the director that they are not crucial to understanding
and enjoying the play, I would add that the ideas behind the mathematics have philosophical importance which contribute to
the optimistic message Mr. Stoppard is trying to convey. Though our bodies, like the stars, are all irrevocably fated
to wind down, to go extinct, nature holds the means for reconstituting the smallest, single act into the complete whole.
Nothing of us is ever lost. "The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way
it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm."
Arcadia
is by turns a character-driven play and a play of ideas. In some productions there is the risk that the characters will
run away with the story; with this one it's that the ideas take will take over. And it is a reflection of the writer
and the director that though each entity pulls hard and furious, they don't allow that to happen. This is an ambitious,
fast-paced, and complex work - a demanding one - that will reward the patient viewer and, hopefully reader, for you should
definitely read this play at some point.
As we begin there are several hilarious sexual intrigues unfolding among
the household guests and residents and everybody is busily engaged in trying to find each other out. The Regency period
Sidley Park is in the process of being transformed, to the dismay of the lady of the house, by a journeyman architect from
a mid-classical faux garden into a romantic gothic horror maze. Meanwhile in the present, toiling in the trenches, characters
are engaged in a variety of investigations to prove their own hobby-horses - a best-selling garden historian with a revisionist
view of the romantic period, an English professor adding a previously unknown footnote (sex, death, and literature) to the
Byronic legend, and a sometimes grad student with a validation of his population studies on grouse, his inheritance being
a treasure trove of data from the family's game books. Along the way all three will validate alternative theories
some with happy consequences, some not.
The play is chockablock with humor. A few of
the characters are several steps ahead of others and they talk around and across them to the audience's delight.
The send ups of the aristocracy and academia are mined for all they are worth. Can they really be that dense and venal?!
There is an inside joke we are allowed to share: the audience stands in relationship to the modern Coverly home as reader
to the unreliable narrator, and we witness a number of dubious historical attributions and outright mistakes with amusement.
The tortoise gets a laugh, if not the hare, as we reflect that in art as in life, victory does not go to the swift, but to
those who finish the race. Pursuit of knowledge as a blood sport rings true in this age of information and sensationalism,
where every fact and factoid are tracked down for the fame and career advancement of the hunter. There are wonderful
resonances in the play echoing back and forth between the two periods. Pay attention and you will find that the ironies abound;
there are no loose ends in this tightly constructed and musical play.
The acting is generally solid, with some
exceptional performances given by Eric Hissom, who as Bernard Nightingale is by measures exuberant, servile, haughty (he gets
his "two cultures" moment), and whipped; Peter Stray as Valentine Coverly shows his enthusiasm with such intensity
that the ideas spilling out of his mouth are almost sensual; Cody Nickell whose verbal parries and thrusts as Septimus
Hodge display the quicksilver mind of this tutor and sometimes courtier; and Erin Weaver's Thomasina Coverly,
consistent with her character's mathematical insight, allows for the flash of her emergent personality and vision.
Hannah Jarvis is a cool customer and Holly Twyford finds the right balance between emotional
bemusement (what's all the fuss about?) and intellectual certainty for the audience to care. Suzanne O'Donnell
captures Lady Croom's acerbic wit and grand demeanor, but the role was perhaps played a little too stridently for this
character's social stature. A thousand yard stare would serve equally well to get what she wants from her inferiors,
and we are all inferiors in her presence. Margot Seibert showed us a Clöe Coverly whose ancestral genes jumped
along with her designer jeans; and Gus Coverly as revenant and Lord Augustus as schoolboy home from the wars are given a nice
turn by Benjamin Schiffbauer. Father and son, Stephen and Cooper D'Ambrose as Richard Noakes and Ezra Chater, respectively,
provide for comic relief - the former as a landscape architect who leaves no hillock unplowed (whose part seems to call for
more hucksterism and less befuddlement), and the latter an ersatz poet (played with an uncertain accent) twice bitten, by
the muse and a monkey. Jared Delaney gives us a blimpish Captain Brice, ready to storm bedrooms if not ramparts.
And Michael Glenn delivered an assured performance as a servant to many masters who is actually all in the know and running
the show.
Limitations of the theatrical space dictated choices in performance and blocking, inhibited some
of the stage business, and impeded the flow. The scenic design (Daniel Conway) was harmonious with the Folger Theater
setting, with a classical, nautical-look and favoring a golden-brown palette, suggesting a sunset or decline in the world
and family fortunes. Costumes (Kate Turner-Walker) transitioned nicely between the muted tones in the older world to
the bolder ones, lavender and pink, of the newer, and the Regency period attire was a real treat. Sound design (Veronika
Vorel) did double duty as a subliminal reference to the mood of the world and as a metaphor for the message - the knowledge
or ultimate truth that lies just beyond the reality of this world.
If Tom Stoppard would allow it, in future
productions, I'd like to see audiovisuals used to clarify the architectural and scientific concepts and move story along.
Given what I saw in the show, I'd consider employing the same actor for Thomasina and Clöe to enhance the themes
of complementarity.
Arcadia is an affirmative play, my favorite of Tom Stoppard's works, and The Folger Theater
has given the Washington DC area a real gift in mounting it. While the performance I attended (following a day off),
seemed a little unsteady, it also just opened a week and a half ago should get better later in the run. But don't
wait too long to see it, as tickets for this small theater are selling quickly.
Sound check: Excellent
Program
notes: Excellent, both hardcopy and online. The theater has a resident dramaturg (Michelle Osherow)
Applause meter:
Highly Recommended 3 1/2 hands
Runtime: About 3 hours with an intermission
