Review: Shaw's ARCADIA at The Royal Alexandra Theatre

At the Shaw Festival in its record-breaking 2013 season, all performances of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" sold-out before it opened. With its current revival engagement at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre (with the original Niagara-on-the-Lake cast), many disappointed theatergoers will finally get their chance to enjoy this exceptional production of what is generally regarded as the playwright's most brilliant work... and his most moving.

However, there is a drawback. At Shaw, "Arcadia" was staged in its intimate approximately 200-seat Studio Theatre. To enter the theatre, audience members walked through the set's French doors and upstage to its comfortable seats on risers. Once the lights came down, you felt part of the action and could look down upon the various props ... letters, books, etc. ... quite clearly.

In the proscenium arched Royal Alex, with its notorious, steeply raked second balcony, one loses the pleasure of intimacy and feeling a part of the action. The back row of Shaw's Studio Theatre would likely be equal to only Row H in the Royal Alex's orchestra.

But obviously, if one did not see that remarkable production of a brilliant play, you really don't know what you are missing when you see it in Toronto.

"Arcadia" at Shaw was an impossible ticket. I happened to be in the right place at the right time, in front of a clerk in the Festival store, The Shawp, as he hung up the phone saying he couldn't believe someone cancelled their two tickets. I pounced ferociously, blurting out "I'll take them."

That's merely caviling. That aside, I enjoyed this terrific production of what is widely regarded as Stoppard's best play as much as I did in Niagara-on-the Lake. Is it Stoppard's finest? I wouldn't know as I haven't seen them all, but it is pretty great.

"Arcadia" is a brilliant, challenging and thoroughly entertaining evening in the theatre. As the character Thomasina's tutor and mathematical whiz Septimus Hodge (played by Gray Powell) might observe, "Quod erat demonstrandum" or "QED."

It is described as essentially "a mystery play" by York University's Hersh Zeifman in his insightful program note. More than that, it's predominantly a comedy, distinguished by witty repartee and world play that brings to mind Oscar Wilde, and tragedy.

"Arcadia switches between 1809/1812 and the present day as its story unfolds. Set in Sidley Park, an idyllic English country house in Derbyshire, the plot follows the lives of its 19th century occupants and its contemporary residents including two scholars - author Hannah Jarvis (Diana Donnelly) and Bernard Nightingale (Patrick McManus), a university don."

Zeifman writes that Stoppard wanted to write about the "contrast between the classical and the romantic - a debate...between head and heart, between thinking and feeling." Director Eda Holmes writes in her note that the element that unites "Arcadia's" "bewildering range of topics - formal gardens, Lord Byron and chaos... -- is time. "Time is both an objective reality and a subjective experience, and in `Arcadia' a lifetime can find meaning in the length of a kiss."

Right from the opening scene, Stoppard unleashes his legendary legerdemain with words, ideas and even high-minded puns, in this case a play on Latin roots. The precocious, 13-year-old Thomasina (Kate Besworth), is interested in chaos theory, the second law of thermodynamics and sex. She asks her tutor, Septimus Hodge, what a carnal embrace is.

He replies:

"Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef... a shoulder of mutton; a haunch of venison well hugged, an embrace of grouse ... caro, carnis; feminine; flesh."

Only Tom Stoppard ... with possibly the exception of Monty Python... could create this kind of Latin-based wordplay. From there Stoppard soars into another flight of imagination, masterfully applying his prodigious wit to science, philosophy, poetry, history, mathematics and ultimately love and death.

The play takes its title from a motto credited to Virgil: "Et in Arcadia ego." "Even in Arcadia, there am I." It means even in the most verdant garden, the most beautiful paradise of love of learning and ideas, Death is there. Ultimately, Stoppard turns his back on that sad inevitability and the play ends with a sad, sweet waltz, followed by curtain calls, the company taking their bows as Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love" plays.

I won't go into the complex plot, but suffice to say this is an intelligent play told with magnificent language spoken by wonderfully talented actors from the Shaw Festival. The challenge is to keep up even though it's impossible to catch everything, especially the subtle witticisms. Some people will be enchanted and others will consider it to be merely prolix and maybe even discursive. More than one audience member I spoke with was lost.

Moreover, it's wonderful that with "Arcadia" the Shaw Festival has established a beachhead in Toronto. Under the consistently inventive direction of artistic director Jackie Maxwell, it has achieved one success after another. "Arcadia's" sold-out engagement in 2013 contributed to ticket sales achieving a $2 million increase over 2012.

The Festival attracted 270,570 people (71%) of capacity to its 744 performances, a growth of 10 percent attendance over the previous season. Box office revenue totaled $16 million, the highest in the Shaw's history.

Now playing until Dec. 14th.

For more information, including tickets, visit www.mirvish.com