Playwright: Tom Stoppard
At: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis
Runs through: June 3
Telephone: 773-753-4472
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
In Arcadia, Tom Stoppard created a dazzling intersection of sex, literature and the sort of mathematics that vaults over the pedestrian world of common integers and soars toward a realm of poetical philosophy where mere numbers seem all but beside the point.
In the Court Theatre production of Arcadia, Stoppard's soaringly romantic and intellectually mind-bending masterpiece shimmers like a multi-faceted diamond. The angles of geometry astound like the verses of the Lake Poets: Lord Byron and his contemporaries merge and diverge with exquisitely graphed equations through which surely—if one only had enough paper and enough time to do the calculations properly—the secrets of the universe would reveal themselves and all would be known.
Stoppard is invariably clever, sometimes overwhelmingly so. But unlike the cerebral acrobatics that astonish and confound in Travesties or Jumpers, the brainiac pace of Arcadia is tempered with characters so achingly human that you weep for them and their foibles even as you revel in their extraordinary wordplay.
In Nicholas Poussin's brilliant painting Et in Arcadia Ego ( slyly referenced in the lightning-witted dialogue and well-worth googling ) , the canvas holds paradise and death, unparalleled vibrancy and obstinate human frailty. In Stoppard's Arcadia, the similarly contrasting and parallel worlds of intellect and reason battle for supremacy. Gloriously, both sides triumph as the precise language of scholars is beset by the wild romance of gargoyles, lunatic hermits and genius poets. Even as emotion brims beyond what the heart can hold in its subjective swells of sorrow and joy, the mind reels with the objective, resplendent logic of Arcadia's glittering geometry. The effect is one of a gorgeous waltz that at once soars beyond measure and is studiously calibrated.
Arcadia unfolds in the large, airy library of Sidley Park ( with Matthew York's evocative set implying, rather than spelling out, architectural significance and beauty ) , an English estate, in scenes that alternate between 1809 and 1989. Over the course of three acts, the goings-on in Sidley Park gradually bleed into each other, until by the final, riveting scene, we've travelled from the sturdy, explainable land of 'good English algebra' to the spinning lands of quantum physics—time travel. Determinism and free-will collide in a final waltz that echoes back and forth across the centuries around a massive table on which the objects of 1807—feather pens, parchments, a pet turtle—co-exist alongside the ephemera of the here-and-now.
Newell's ravishing production boasts an unbeatable cast. First among equals is Mary Beth Fisher's understatedly fierce Hannah Jarvis, a no-nonsense, almost utterly unsentimental scholar who can put fools in their place with a single, impeccably placed glare and a perfectly delivered barb. Hannah's polar opposite is Kevin McKillip's pretentiously self-important Bernard Nightingale, an academic of hilarious hubris. Also doing wonderful work is Kate Fry, as the elegant, cutting Lady Croom and Erik Hellman as Valentine Coverly, a mathematician who finds amazement and wonder in the margins of a century-old primer.