RSS 2.0 FeedSeptember 2009, EDITOR'S PICK OF THE MONTH
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard's other work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tony Award), Jumpers, Travesties (Tony Award), Night and Day, After Margritte, The Real Thing (Tony Award), Enter a Free Man, Hapgood, Arcadia (Evening Standard Award, The Oliver Award and the Critics Award), Dalliance and Undiscovered Country, Indian Ink (a stage adaptation of his own play, In the Native State) and The Invention of Love.
As a playwright whose work has come to stand for all that's best about the contemporary idea play, the incomparable Tom Stoppard can do the impossible. Arcadia is a modern day mystery involving a core of academics hoping to find support for and publish their research theses. The plot incorporates an early 19th Century series of flashbacks with elements of English drawing room farce, romance and tragedy. This is just the framework, however. The play takes on the nature of scholarship, the genesis of original thought, the poetry of Lord Byron, classical English gardening and landscaping, advanced mathematical theory and the ultimate death of the universe. Only Stoppard himself could adequately describe how he can hold us rapt as he juggles so many different sized balls without dropping a one, and then how he manages to make them nest both side by side and within each other. Pure magic.
L.A. Theatre Works' production is perfectly and evenly cast. Special kudos to Jennifer Dundas, whose perky and poignant Thomasina lives on long after the curtain comes down. A don't miss. For lovers of serious modern drama, it doesn't get better than Arcadia.
Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. Read by Kate Burton and a full cast. 3 compact disks. 2 hrs. 46 mins. LA Theatre Works. 2009. 978-1-5808-1596-3. *A
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