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Theater review: Butterfield 8 makes Tom Stoppard's dense 'Arcadia' a treat
By Pat Craig
Correspondent
Posted: 02/12/2010 03:21:54 PM PST
Updated: 02/14/2010 02:56:05 PM PST
Butterfield 8 Theatre Company's production of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" ends with a waltz, but spends most of its time in a trans-century dance with concepts of higher math, intellectual dithering, sex, gardening and other pursuits of high and low culture.
The production, staged elegantly in a converted Concord storefront, is not only a well-wrought piece of theater, but also a ripping good yarn that seesaws back and forth between the early 19th century and the present day. Both eras unfold on the Coverly Estate in Derbyshire, England, ancestral home of the Coverly family.
"Arcadia" covers acres of cerebral ground in its 2½-hour-plus running time (which, in this case, feels a lot shorter than many 90-minute shows). This has frightened many theater companies away from what has become regarded as Stoppard's "math play." And it is, but it is the sort of math so advanced that it is quite entertaining. While its finer points, and some of its broader points, won't be fully understood by those of us who need a calculator to count our fingers, that shouldn't prevent you from understanding and enjoying the play.
Of course, you may feel a little ashamed of yourself when you observe 13-year-old Lady Thomasina Coverly (Becky Potter) sitting in an 1809 drawing room on the estate, and coming up with the rudimentary notions of Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basics of chaos theory (I don't know, either) as she noodles in her notebook and slowly
deepens her crush on her teacher, Septimus Hodge (Edwin Peabody), a long-suffering artist and intellectual who hangs out with minor poet Ezra Chater (David Hardie) and major poet Lord Byron, who isn't seen in the play.
Meanwhile, the rest of the house is involved in either hanky or panky, and often both, as they while away the time in 19th-century wealth. The family's reputation brings literary bigwigs to the estate in modern times. Hannah Jarvis (Maureen-Theresa Williams), an author, and Bernard Nightingale (Donald L. Hardy), a scholar starving for the sort of discovery that will launch him into the stratosphere of poetic scholarship, are at the estate to do research. Current Coverly family members Chloe (Julia Scharlach), Valentine (Peter J. McArthur) and Gus (Alexander Murphy) are on hand mostly to excite the scholars and demonstrate the Coverly intellect and libido remain intact after all these years.
The show plays much better than it tells - director John Butterfield has done a masterful job making the show move smoothly between the decades and to give the information-dense play a believable pace and delivery.
Much credit for that, too, goes to the actors, who have obviously done their homework on any number of things to deliver their lines, subtext and all, with authority. The actors, too, present characterizations, from attitude and posture to the phrasing of lines with a wonderful faithfulness to the period.
Potter and Peabody have a nice chemistry as pupil and teacher, Scharlach creates a wonderfully rich character in Chloe, and the trio of Williams, Hardy and McArthur are a treat to watch for their witty and nasty characterizations.
By Pat Craig
Correspondent
Posted: 02/12/2010 03:21:54 PM PST
Updated: 02/14/2010 02:56:05 PM PST
Butterfield 8 Theatre Company's production of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" ends with a waltz, but spends most of its time in a trans-century dance with concepts of higher math, intellectual dithering, sex, gardening and other pursuits of high and low culture.
The production, staged elegantly in a converted Concord storefront, is not only a well-wrought piece of theater, but also a ripping good yarn that seesaws back and forth between the early 19th century and the present day. Both eras unfold on the Coverly Estate in Derbyshire, England, ancestral home of the Coverly family.
"Arcadia" covers acres of cerebral ground in its 2½-hour-plus running time (which, in this case, feels a lot shorter than many 90-minute shows). This has frightened many theater companies away from what has become regarded as Stoppard's "math play." And it is, but it is the sort of math so advanced that it is quite entertaining. While its finer points, and some of its broader points, won't be fully understood by those of us who need a calculator to count our fingers, that shouldn't prevent you from understanding and enjoying the play.
Of course, you may feel a little ashamed of yourself when you observe 13-year-old Lady Thomasina Coverly (Becky Potter) sitting in an 1809 drawing room on the estate, and coming up with the rudimentary notions of Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basics of chaos theory (I don't know, either) as she noodles in her notebook and slowly
deepens her crush on her teacher, Septimus Hodge (Edwin Peabody), a long-suffering artist and intellectual who hangs out with minor poet Ezra Chater (David Hardie) and major poet Lord Byron, who isn't seen in the play.
Meanwhile, the rest of the house is involved in either hanky or panky, and often both, as they while away the time in 19th-century wealth. The family's reputation brings literary bigwigs to the estate in modern times. Hannah Jarvis (Maureen-Theresa Williams), an author, and Bernard Nightingale (Donald L. Hardy), a scholar starving for the sort of discovery that will launch him into the stratosphere of poetic scholarship, are at the estate to do research. Current Coverly family members Chloe (Julia Scharlach), Valentine (Peter J. McArthur) and Gus (Alexander Murphy) are on hand mostly to excite the scholars and demonstrate the Coverly intellect and libido remain intact after all these years.
The show plays much better than it tells - director John Butterfield has done a masterful job making the show move smoothly between the decades and to give the information-dense play a believable pace and delivery.
Much credit for that, too, goes to the actors, who have obviously done their homework on any number of things to deliver their lines, subtext and all, with authority. The actors, too, present characterizations, from attitude and posture to the phrasing of lines with a wonderful faithfulness to the period.
Potter and Peabody have a nice chemistry as pupil and teacher, Scharlach creates a wonderfully rich character in Chloe, and the trio of Williams, Hardy and McArthur are a treat to watch for their witty and nasty characterizations.