Arcadia at the Ethel Barrymore theater (crossposted)

A suspicion lingers in the heart of the constant theatergoer that if you are too clever, then you must be made of ice. This prejudice has misguidedly dogged, among others, that greatest of songwriters, Stephen Sondheim, like a peevish, affection-starved beagle. But it has never clung to anyone more tenaciously and erroneously than it does to the playwright Tom Stoppard. — Ben Brantley, “The 180-Year Itch, Metaphysically Speaking,” The New York Times

 

This is the production relia  and I saw on Sunday, the day after we saw (the mindblowing) Sleep No More.  Tom Stoppard is my favorite playwright and Arcadia is probably my second- or third-favorite of his plays, but I’d never had the chance to see it staged before; relia  had the luck of having neither seen nor read it and coming into it fresh.  We had pretty good seats and a lot of excitement, at least on my part, since I was pretty much bouncing in my pretty good seat over the chance to see Arcadia on Broadway with Billy Crudup as Bernard Nightingale.

 

His Bernard really stole the show: everything he did was entertaining and I kept looking back at him for his reactions to things characters were saying even when they weren’t addressing him, which is always a good sign on the stage.  Hannah, Septimus, and Valentine were all great too — I’m going to have to disagree with that review and say that Thomasina nasally yelling her lines was fine for the beginning, where sounding obnoxious and petulant was suited to nagging Septimus about carnal embrace, but got a bit much when she delivered all of her lines that way.  Septimus’s line-delivery was fantastic and everyone laughed when they were supposed to laugh, which I imagine is a credit to an actor in Arcadia where audience members who don’t like science or aren’t paying attention may have no idea why they are laughing.

 

That’s the thing about Arcadia.  I don’t really know what to say about it — it’s Stoppard, so it’s brilliant, and it’s kind of the ultimate anti-anti-intellectual play, but if you don’t already have an appreciation for its messages about intellectual curiosity and knowledge and time you probably won’t get it anyway.  It’s not the most accessible play in the universe.  But I don’t think everything has an obligation to be accessible.

 

Loved Arcadia, of course, and also loved the production.  Like all the best plays, it comes off a hundred times better in the staging.

Sleep No More, by Punchdrunk/Emursive

 I... you know, I really wanted to review Sleep No More.  Reviewing things is kind of what I do instead of diary entries, as it were -- a little marker that I existed on Saturday, March 26 and went to something called Sleep No More and here was what I was thinking.  I pretty much count my existence between things I review, even restaurants on Yelp.  So I spent a lot of time thinking about a few cogent paragraphs on this one.

I don't have them.  I really don't.  It was amazing -- the most amazing piece of theater I've ever seen, and not from a dearth of theater, either.  All I can say is that it was Macbeth meets Silent Hill meets House of Leaves meets a text adventure meets the Jazz Age meets "they try to separate us" scrawled in red lipstick on my left arm in desperation for relia  sans my personal effects, writing utensils, paper, or ability to talk.  All I can say is that you ever get the chance to see it, the $75 is more than worth it, provided you have walking shoes, an appreciation for mystery and horror, and a strong stomach.

I mean it about the strong stomach.  It's the scariest thing I've ever seen, and I like good horror.  I don't mean it was the kind of good horror I could appreciate from afar.  I mean it was the kind of good horror that drove me to write a desperate message on my left arm in lipstick because it seemed like life-and-death importance at the time.  I don't recommend it to anyone who has a genuine psychological reaction to horror and scary situations, because it's a two-hour $75 terrifying situation.  I'm pretty sure I've been ruined for haunted house attractions and video games.  None of them are going to be Sleep No More.  Anyway, I have nothing else to say on the matter, just: go go go.