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Theatre Review: "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard
Friday, 19 March 2010 12:44 amJust got in from a production of Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard.
If you're local, a recommendation to go see it tomorrow or Saturday.
To start with the minuses: it felt too long by 20 minutes. It was 3 hours with a 15-minute intermission. The first act dragged, and not from the material- the pacing felt like they were sloooowwwwiiing down. The players, wisely I think, didn't try to put on English accents, but I kept having to remind myself we were in 19th Century (or modern) Derbyshire, England. The closing 20 minutes included a piece of music with a soft-pop singer in it, which totally jarred me out of believing in the time-period.
The pluses: the play itself is really good. The plot is complicated, and quite talky. Broad brush-strokes: it covers entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, fractals, whole piles of classical poetry, free will, determinism, romanticism versus classicism, love, madness...
I'm glad I read the wikipedia page beforehand, because many classical references were well above my head (the name Arcadia, for example; Thomasina the 13-year-old genius understands her Latin; and shares a moment with her tutor that is completely lost by her mother; I think there's a theme of "what exactly is going on with the tutor" that gets a bit more play with more knowledge of the references.) I hope you'll forgive me not explaining the bulk of the plot- the wikipedia page does a good job, at least.
There was a lot of dry humour. The setting is elaborate, set in the country house of a lord (or his descendants). For most of the play, scenes alternate between the 19th and 20th century. It's centered on a huge desk, where peoples' effects stay put as the stage resets flips between "then" and "now". This choice is understated in the first act; and then in the second, it feels intentionally "sloppier": a character leaves his laptop; one person pours a glass of wine in the 19th century and it is drunk by another in the 20th. There is a boy, Gus, who is mute and is played by the same actor (in the same clothes) playing Augustus, the brother of Thomasina.
For the last few scenes action is mixed with both time-periods at the same time. By the second act you get a good feeling for the characters' personalities, and seeing them around the same table, arguing in counterpoint, works well.
The actors are fairly good, for the most part. I was impressed by the woman playing Thomasina. Overall they were fairly good, but not polished- the indignant cuckolded poet and his friend the Captain felt particularly weak to me, which is a shame, because if they had been stronger, their pathos would've played a stronger counterpoint to the dry wit.
It was well-attended, at least; though I think 2/3 of the audience were highschoolers. (I watched a group of six try and decide where to sit; they acted exactly like starlings flocking, circling, settling, then taking off again to another bunch of seats. They did that, like, 4 times.) Also, the girls who were cooing after Gus (during the show! every time he smiled!) were a bit much.
I will need to close here, as it's after midnight. I think some time I would like to see this done professionally. And, possibly to seek out more Tom Stoppard plays; I've only seen "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". (And I've seen both "Brazil" and "Shakespeare in Love", though neither left me very favourably disposed).
Oh- and I think the way I wound up seeing it was neat; I ran into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thingo, he invited me for tonight's show, I said I'd never heard of it, sounds great, then I discovered it was the night for the monthly Perl Mongers meeting. We were talking about it in IRC, and a small pile of folks said "actually, I'd go see that." So some of us did (and some of us bailed! Slackers! ...kidding). Go, go, coding poets!
If you're local, a recommendation to go see it tomorrow or Saturday.
To start with the minuses: it felt too long by 20 minutes. It was 3 hours with a 15-minute intermission. The first act dragged, and not from the material- the pacing felt like they were sloooowwwwiiing down. The players, wisely I think, didn't try to put on English accents, but I kept having to remind myself we were in 19th Century (or modern) Derbyshire, England. The closing 20 minutes included a piece of music with a soft-pop singer in it, which totally jarred me out of believing in the time-period.
The pluses: the play itself is really good. The plot is complicated, and quite talky. Broad brush-strokes: it covers entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, fractals, whole piles of classical poetry, free will, determinism, romanticism versus classicism, love, madness...
I'm glad I read the wikipedia page beforehand, because many classical references were well above my head (the name Arcadia, for example; Thomasina the 13-year-old genius understands her Latin; and shares a moment with her tutor that is completely lost by her mother; I think there's a theme of "what exactly is going on with the tutor" that gets a bit more play with more knowledge of the references.) I hope you'll forgive me not explaining the bulk of the plot- the wikipedia page does a good job, at least.
There was a lot of dry humour. The setting is elaborate, set in the country house of a lord (or his descendants). For most of the play, scenes alternate between the 19th and 20th century. It's centered on a huge desk, where peoples' effects stay put as the stage resets flips between "then" and "now". This choice is understated in the first act; and then in the second, it feels intentionally "sloppier": a character leaves his laptop; one person pours a glass of wine in the 19th century and it is drunk by another in the 20th. There is a boy, Gus, who is mute and is played by the same actor (in the same clothes) playing Augustus, the brother of Thomasina.
For the last few scenes action is mixed with both time-periods at the same time. By the second act you get a good feeling for the characters' personalities, and seeing them around the same table, arguing in counterpoint, works well.
The actors are fairly good, for the most part. I was impressed by the woman playing Thomasina. Overall they were fairly good, but not polished- the indignant cuckolded poet and his friend the Captain felt particularly weak to me, which is a shame, because if they had been stronger, their pathos would've played a stronger counterpoint to the dry wit.
It was well-attended, at least; though I think 2/3 of the audience were highschoolers. (I watched a group of six try and decide where to sit; they acted exactly like starlings flocking, circling, settling, then taking off again to another bunch of seats. They did that, like, 4 times.) Also, the girls who were cooing after Gus (during the show! every time he smiled!) were a bit much.
I will need to close here, as it's after midnight. I think some time I would like to see this done professionally. And, possibly to seek out more Tom Stoppard plays; I've only seen "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". (And I've seen both "Brazil" and "Shakespeare in Love", though neither left me very favourably disposed).
Oh- and I think the way I wound up seeing it was neat; I ran into
thingo, he invited me for tonight's show, I said I'd never heard of it, sounds great, then I discovered it was the night for the monthly Perl Mongers meeting. We were talking about it in IRC, and a small pile of folks said "actually, I'd go see that." So some of us did (and some of us bailed! Slackers! ...kidding). Go, go, coding poets!
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