Quick review: Shouldn’t there be more to “intelligent drama” than setting a play in two time periods at once and talking a lot about science and literature?

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard is at the IU Dept. of Theater and Drama right now. I entered it with some trepidation, and that feeling wasn’t disappointed.

I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in high school, and I was totally enamored with it (and, wow, that sure didn’t happen with much of the fiction that I read in high school). The idea of telling a famous story over from the point of view of two trivial characters seemed brilliant and exciting to me, and mixing in a bunch of quirky banter to demonstrate just how trivial these characters are made it that much more enjoyable and even thought provoking. However, my appreciation for him fell when I saw the film version, which he directed. I felt that it not only added nothing to the book, but even detracted from it. Thus began the gradual slide of my opinion of the author.

Now, I am certainly no expert on his work. I didn’t know until reading the program last night that he co-wrote the screenplay for [Brazil](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/), which is certainly a film that I respect and enjoy. But I can’t say the same about [Shakespeare in Love](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138097/), in which so many people I know took such delight. And I saw an interview with him on Letterman or some such many years ago, and I found him to be quite uninteresting. So, it was with this background that I entered the theater last night.

Arcadia seems to be his best-known play since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which retells the story of Hamlet. Shakespeare in Love plays sort of the same trick, except that it plays its games with history rather than literature. Arcadia plays the same kind of game yet again, but this time it gives us both the “thing” and the “retold thing”. Ok, not exactly, but the idea of reflecting on one story by following characters who are somehow stuck on it themselves is definitely there. And, yeah, I guess it just doesn’t seem as clever to me anymore, 40 years later.

Most, my issues with the play were pretty simple: I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t marvelling at plays on words. I wasn’t reflecting on the nature of science and existence. I wasn’t reconsidering my understanding of the relationship between academia and the rest of the world. I definitely got the feeling that these were all things I was supposed to be doing. But I wasn’t doing any of them. I was reflecting somewhat on how history tries to piece together what were once very real situations. Something to be said for that. But mostly, I was fidgeting in my chair, and marvelling at how contrived the relationships between the characters seemed.

How are we supposed to take it when an aristocratic child’s tutor glibly “confesses” to a follow guest in this Victorian household that he had been having an affair with his wife? And then weasels out of it (at least, for a while) by complementing the man’s poetry? Presumably these things are just supposed to be funny, and the fact that I can’t imagine them happening should just be tossed aside in the name of enjoyment of the comedy of the situation. Ok, I’m willing to consider that. But it just isn’t that funny. So, what’s the use?

Meanwhile, in the present, the science-minded descendent of the same family is busy working on chaos equations on his computer. Apparently to make for lots of other supposedly funny situations, he builds a do-it-yourself dysfunctional family out of a best-selling author of books about gardens and an extraordinarily pompous academic whose field is the history of Lord Byron. The academic hates the work of the author. The author is naturally defensive about that, but has no trouble building a very rational and well-deserved disgust for this man. I suppose I have experienced times (in art and in life) when romantic tension between two people who grate on each other from their first meeting seems to unfold naturally, but this certainly wasn’t one of those times. And, of course, the scientist has a crush on the author as well. We never see a single emotion from the man, though, we just hear him joke about it. And, then, just to thicken the plot, the scientist’s seemingly under-age sister ends up with a crush on the academic. *sigh*

So, the love polygon doesn’t really make sense to me, but what *really* doesn’t make sense to me is the fact that they all hang out with each other like the Brady Bunch. Sure, it’s easy to imagine that the academic and the author would join forces for the purpose of historical investigation even though they don’t like each other… but it’s unbelievable to think that they’d just pace around the livingroom idly while their host and his siblings all just do their chores. Somehow I was supposed to understand why these people all ended up spending so much of their personal time with each other, but I sure didn’t get there.

But I don’t think I’m so much of a curmudgeon that I wouldn’t be able to just accept all of this and enjoy a good laugh. So, I guess my real problem was that the situations weren’t that comedic for me. Nor did the talk about Fermat’s last theorem, determinism, entropy, etc. result in thought-provoking situations for me. Having the past and the present unfold simultaneously was somewhat clever, but not clever enough to make it a good play. Largely, I just left the theater feeling glad it was over.

Having said all of that, I have to make mention that the production of the play seemed quite good to me. I always feel trepidatious saying good things about a production that I didn’t enjoy, because I have to wonder if issues I don’t notice might make me less satisfied with the end result. But, the characters themselves seemed largely real, even when their situations seemed anything but. And the use of the nearly static set for past and present worked remarkably well. So, I’m thankful for the IU theater for bringing this work to our community. I just wish I liked it better.