When Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia premiered in 1993 chaos theory was still relatively new to popular culture having its most popular debut with the publication of James Gleick’s book less than a decade earlier. The play is showing its age. The Public Theatre production does justice to the script but also highlights its flaws (at the Bathhouse on Greenlake through June 8) delivering the text with inconsistent acting and questionable direction.
Stoppard is the lead practitioner of a class of plays, still flourishing today, that aspire to extreme cleverness, and some pithy statements on the human condition. Stoppard is both the most accomplished playwright of the genre and the most overtly erudite and allusive. For those of us who are less than fully enlightened, who were not bred in the halls of Oxbridge and Eton, have not studied Latin and philosophy, or read the suggested reading list, Stoppard’s works pass as a river. They are recognizable in their entirety and even in the grosser details but much rushes past in a torrent of verbiage and allusion. It makes for a delightful swim for those who can happily accept and admit to a degree of ignorance. It can be rough going for anyone who sometimes finds himself feeling stupid and dislikes it.
Arcadia presents a pair of academics sleuthing after new discoveries in harrowed soil. Hannah Jarvis (an excellent Alyson Sadron Branner) is measured and careful, establishing relationships and collaborating on others’ pet projects to facilitate access to materials supporting her own pet theory. Enter Bernard Nightingale (Evan Whitfield), brash, arrogant, rude, and every bit as ambitious as Hannah, who jumps into her carefully prepared research grounds. Their paths cross in the library of a Derbyshire estate where, two centuries earlier, Byron was Byronic on a brief visit, and a host of other possibly significant minutia may have occurred.
Stoppard keeps things more dramatic than dry by dramatizing the history dug up by this misfit pair. The actual (fictional) events surrounding and resulting from that brief bardic visit play out in alternating scenes with those of the late 20th century research. This produces several effects that pique audience interest.
Dramaturgically the play unfolds as a mystery in which we see the detective’s attempts at solving the problem while we see the actual problem unfold. Here the late 20th century academics play the detectives and early 19th century aristocrats and their retinue play the problem so the play leaps back and forth across two centuries finding the rhymes in history. We enjoy the involvement of attempting to solve the mystery on our own all the more so because we get to see where the detective goes wrong. The difference between truth and hypothesis illustrates the detective’s character and something of human nature.
The suspects and witnesses of this particular mystery include Thomasina (the young Izabel Mar all but steals the show) the genius daughter of an aristocrat. Her tutor, Septimus (a flawless Trevor Young Marston), is nearly as volatile and virile as his (unseen) school chum, Byron. Of prime interest to the researchers is the estate’s resident poet, Ezra Chater (Brandon Ryan).
Stoppard overplays his hand in this. The historical characters turn out to be more interesting that the more contemporary ones. Nonetheless Bernard’s interest in Byron takes center stage while Hannah’s research gets short shrift in the plot and feels more like a device to establish rivalry. More thematically important is research by a member of the modern generation of aristocrats, Valentine (Trick Danneker), who is attempting to further understanding of chaos theory using the estate’s centuries of data on grouse hunting.
In both centuries there is a lot of pining, sex, and suggestion that also helps keep the audience’s interest, but women tend to come off as sluts or icebergs in these situations. The direction doesn’t try to counteract this tendency in the script. Jocelyn Maher has the thankless task of playing Chloë, who makes after Bernard like a cat in heat when she isn’t ordering people about. Maher shows fine ability in her earlier scenes.
The production frequently walks the line between professional and community theatre standards. Chelsea Cook’s costumes are often ill-fitting or ill-conceived. Craig Wollam’s set aims for more than its materials support with fluttering, unintentionally translucent flats. Robert Aguilar’s lighting is good and will look better with more practice for the board ops. One hopes that practice is all that’s needed by a sound design that lacks nuance.
The real damage is done by director, Kelly Kitchens, who often pushes the farcical elements of the play beyond the breaking point. She is adept at slapping classical lazzi onto a scene but does not execute comedy. The gags don’t grow but only repeat with pointless variation and poor execution—the clown roles are pawned off on the least expert members of the cast. The script stops while the gags play.
Kitchens does not drive the script into a consistent farce—despite the trio of doors—and each turn of hijinks quickly gives way to wit and intellectual pursuit. Unfortunately it sometimes sags when it returns to wit, especially in the 20th century parts. The production as a whole is inconsistent.
Whitfield demonstrates this inconsistency most dramatically going from curried bombast that bludgeons the audience into mild amusement to sharp wit that lands every joke when he’s allowed to scale down his performance. The effect is less of an arrogant blowhard than a manic-depressive.
Danneker bravely soldiers through the least showy role and wins our sympathy. If anything he underplays, which might be delightful in another production but gets lost here. Emily Goodwin does a lot of shouting as the 19th century Lady Croom and becomes interesting and engaging when she gives up the angry-equals-loud approach.
Even through the roadblocks of this production, and despite its flaws, Stoppard’s script both tickles and mesmerizes—more a laughing brook than a raging river. With any luck we’ll get to watch that stream rush by again soon under direction that doesn’t dam up the flow.
