I've successfully resisted posting individual reviews of Arcadia, saving them for a round-up I've put together today. The one review I can't post that's the outlier is from the New Yorker which took issue with both the production and the play itself. ... Can't post that one as it's behind the big Conde Nast paywall. --Worth the read though. Anyway, here goes:
Huffington Post
Behold the brilliance of Tom Stoppard! His genius is reason enough to see the Broadway revival of Arcadia at the Barrymore, a civilizing relief ably directed by David Leveaux, just as the culture at large focuses on another kind of theater: the wild ravings of Charlie Sheen. Set in the stately Derbyshire estate in two time periods, the Romantic era 1809, and a modern 1993 featuring literary scholars who mine archaic manuscripts and letters in search of evidence to support slim career-making theories, Arcadia takes a sly swipe at the academic world, and tells a much richer story celebrating the life of the mind. [more]
The Daily News
This is, without doubt, not a play to watch passively. It takes as much energy as it gives, demanding at least a passing understanding of, say, Fermat's theorem and chaos theory. Even so, the ideas themselves are not as important as the search for knowledge, or, as one character says, "It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise, we're going out the way we came in." [more]
The Financial Times
Valentine Coverly, the modern-day mathematician in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, now in an engaging revival on Broadway, celebrates science while praising the mysteriousness of infinity. Both the infinity speech and Raúl Esparza’s superlative performance as Valentine are key elements in this David Leveaux-directed production, which was staged with different actors two years ago in London. The most conspicuous difference between it and the version that premiered in 1993 is Valentine’s use of an up-to-date Apple laptop, whose access to Google et al enriches the resonance of the references to algorithms. [more]
The Times Square Chronicles
Arcadia comments about the intellectualism of the heart and our connection to its findings. Mortality is played along with reincarnation. Lightening, the turtle, has seen and survived it all and thus makes it from 1809 into the present. Directed by David Leveaux, this three-hour play seems tedious not magical but I adore Stoppard and the men’s performances are first rate, as is Margaret Colin’s. I have been spoiled by two marvelous productions and that always has one expecting more. Stoppard’s words are like Shakespeare, you either get them or you don’t. "When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore." Thankfully we are not in danger of that. [more]
USA Today
The performances are all splendid, but a few actors are especially striking, among them Tom Riley and Bel Powley, both U.K.-based troupers making their Broadway debuts. Riley's briskly intelligent Septimus is as endearing as he is charismatic, particularly as his student grows older and his feelings for her evolve. Powley's exuberant, funny, touching Thomasina never lets us question Septimus' affection and admiration. [more]
The New York Observer
It's as packed with facts and ideas as any of Mr. Stoppard's works—his characters expound on English history, Newtonian physics, Lord Byron, iterated algorithms and entropy, among other things—but it's also, it seems to me, far more accessible than many of his other works. (The acclaimed Coast of Utopia exhausted me.) As the scenes alternate between 1809 and today, we watch the earlier story reveal itself just as the modern researchers discover it for themselves, allowing us to share in their anticipation and exaltation. Their curiosity becomes our curiosity; their satisfaction is ours, too.
But the pleasure of this play is not just in its ideas; it's in its boisterous humor and rich characters too. Mr. Stoppard has created a group of charming kooks, eccentrics both Victorian and modern, and Mr. Leveaux has assembled a generally excellent cast for it. [more]
Broadway World
Be sure to look at this. It's a video preview of the show. [more]
