Rebekah Brockman (Thomasina Coverly) and Jack Cutmore-Scott (Septimus Hodge) in A.C.T.’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, directed by Carey Perloff. Photo by Kevin Berne.
ARCADIA: Drama. By Tom Stoppard. Directed by Carey Perloff. American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. (415) 749-2228 or www.act-sf.org. Through June 9, 2013.
Stoppard’s abstruse ARCADIA is beautifully staged by A.C.T.
The love affair between artistic director Carey Perloff and Tom Stoppard continues with a stunning staging of the esoteric Arcadia that is considered Stoppard’s masterpiece. A.C.T.’s first go around with Stoppard began in 1969 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and continued with Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia I(1995), Indian Ink U.S. Premiere), The Invention of Love (U.S. Premiere), and lastly Rock ‘n Roll. With the exception of Arcadia this reviewer had seen all of the plays listed and was impressed.
It behooves those of us who have never seen nor read Arcadia to do research about the concepts discussed in the two acts, seven scene, and three hour play before going to the theatre. Even then there will be difficulty understanding the interaction of two generations one who has lived and the other living 200 years later in a very large country house in Derbyshire, England. The scenes shift from1809 to the present with the final scene a confusion as Stoppard has taken a page from Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves having the two families, although in different eras, sharing the same space. The first scene is a joy to watch with fine actors romping about and capturing the audience with its self-contained storyline wrapped in humor with marvelous tongue-and-cheek direction.
It is 1809 and the place is a room on the garden front of the mansion. Intellectually precocious 13 year old Thomasina Coverly (Rebekah Brockman) is studying mathematics with her tutor Septimus Hodge (Jack Cutmore-Scott). She is trying to prove Fermat’s last theorem but she is
Jack Cutmore-Scott (Septimus Hodge) and Nicholas Pelczar (Ezra Chater)
more interested in having a definition of “carnal embrace” since the word has spread that Septimus was seen in the gazebo having such an embrace with Mrs. Chater married to second-rate poet Ezra Chater (Nicholas Pelczar). Ezra, with Captain Brice (Nick Gabriel) as his second is attempting to induce Septimus into a duel. Pelczar plays the role of Ezra with flamboyant indignation while Cutmore-Scott’s Septimus parries with brilliant delicious aplomb and flattery that wins the day. It helps that San Francisco icon Ken Ruta plays the role of Jellaby the butler.
From this point on, Stoppard indulges in his trademark intellectual banter with each major character getting his turn to emote and carry the storyline as the time frame shifts between 1809 and the present. To Stoppard’s credit and Perloff’s direction the relationship between the family characters becomes understandable and the unraveling of who did what to whom is plausible.
Lord Byron is introduced into the mystery of what happened to Ezra Chater. Did Byron have a fling with Chater’s wife and did he kill Ezra in a duel? This allows Stoppard to introduce Bernard Nightingale (dynamic Andy Murray) a present day literary critic and chronicler of Lord Byron’s life into the mix. Murray’s time upon the stage adds greatly to the humor and his parrying with Gretchen Egolf playing author Hannah Jarvis whose book has been belittled by Nightingale is first rate theatre.
Interspersed with the individual gems of acting are longwinded stretches of dialog where Stoppard is conveying to us the dictum that he is an intellectual giant. That may be so, but with almost hours of running time Arcadia is not for everyone.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com.
