[NEohioPAL] Review of "Arcadia" at Mamai Theatre

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Challenging 'Arcadia' given a stellar staging 

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the Cleveland Jewish News on 8/1/14

 

Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia," currently being staged by the Mamaí Theatre Company, is the kind of play that separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls among theater goers.  

 

Extravagantly lengthy, opulently wordy and intellectually challenging, this play tests one's endurance while this production of it - beautifully directed by Christine McBurney with particular attention given to the thread of frivolity that weaves its way through the script - makes the arduous journey well worth the while.  

 

"Arcadia" is set in a drawing room that overlooks the garden at Sidley Park, an English country estate in Derbyshire, England.  The play alternates between the present day and the turn of the 19th century, as the estate's time-separated inhabitants' exploration of the relationship between order and chaos, certainty and uncertainty, and fact and fiction becomes increasingly permeable as the play progresses.

 

At the very center of this play - which has the feel of a mystery but the heart of a comedy of manners - is the unquenchable human urge to acquire knowledge, whether carnal, mathematical, literary, historical or metaphysical.   "It's the wanting to know," says one of the characters toward the end of the play, "that makes us matter" and which drives this story. 

 

When the play opens it is 1809 and we meet Thomasina Coverly, a precocious teenager with ideas about science and nature that are significantly ahead of her time (played by an enthralling Meghan Grover, who captures every ounce of her character's playfulness and unbridled inquisitively).  She is seen studying with her tutor, Septimus Hodge.  

 

Young Mr. Hodge (played with immense charm by Jason Kaufman) is a bit of a rapscallion.  He talks his way out of duels with minor poet and Sidley Park guest Ezra Chater (an affable Stuart Hoffman, who walks a fine line between comedy and clowning) with the same casual dexterity he employs while talking his way into a woman's bed.  

 

His conquests include Chater's wife (never seen in this play; a delectable ploy by the playwright) and Sidley Park hostess Lady Croom (played with the perfect air of entitlement by Valerie Young). 

 

For more of this review, go to:  http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com or 

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_7edfb66a-1431-11e4-989f-0019bb2963f4.html
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