Context & Continuity

The Economist, 4.13.11: Q&A: David Leveaux, director of "Arcadia" on Broadway

The Economist has jumped on the bandwagon that got started with the news of the revival of Arcadia and has published a Q&A with the play's director, David Leveaux. It's an in-depth interview and explores his interpretation of the play, in detail.  Herewith:

First of all, "Arcadia" does something at a very high level that is evident in Tom's [Stoppard] other plays, but here it comes together in an authority of coherence. He takes elements, which on the face of it do not appear to be connected, and puts them in the same room and understands where they connect. That connection is largely coiled up in what Hannah Jarvis says: "It’s the wanting to know that makes us matter." Something I said to the company is that ‘we’re not really in the business of trying to transmit ideas'. The theatre of "Arcadia" exists as something more plastic: the poignancy of viral enthusiasm and emotions [behind those ideas]. It's people’s enthusiasm and passion that ultimately allow the characters to touch with a familiar strangeness across centuries. It’s something to do with the core of the play—it's fabulously un-cynical—the greater the curiosity, the more humanity these characters have.  [more]

There is just one thing, a small nit:  The fact checker for the blog post missed the name of one of Stoppard's most celebrate plays.  In the post, the play is titled "The Right Thing."  In real life, the correct title is "The Real Thing." 

Oh, and, by the way, thank you Jimmy for making sure this was on my radar. 

Arcadia: A Review Round-Up.

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]

 

Consensus-Driven Book Recommendations: Proust Makes the List.

From the Guardian...

Do Top 100 Books polls and charts agree on a set of classics?  I scraped the results of over [sic] 15 notable book polls, readers surveys and top 100's. Both popular and high-brow. They included all Pulitzer Prize winners, Desert Island Discs choices from recent years, Oprah's Bookclub list, and, of course, The Guardian's Top 100 Books of All Time. A  simple frequency analysis on the gathered titles gives us a neat 'consensus cloud' visualisation of the most mentioned books titles across the polls. Do you agree with the consensus?  [more]

Well, this is rather a mixed bag.  Let's see... The Hitchkiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes in over War and Peace and Do Androids Dram ofelectric Sheep.  His Dark Materials is about on par with Remembrance of Things Past.  To Kill a Mockingbird leads Harry Potter and Harry Potter leads Scoop, The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Atlas Shrugged, The Wind and the Willows, Twilight and Persuasion.  --Wow.  Where does one even start with this?  On the one hand, I'm amazed, in positive and negative ways that some of these titles are on the list at all.  On the other hand, I see the residue of popular culture, High School / College reading lists and, my favorite category, "more honored in the breach than in the observance." 

Jerry Michalski: Regarding Persistance and the Internet

For a long time now, Jerry Michalski has been striding around the planet thinking Deep Thoughts about Digital Communications / Collaboration / Commerce. A few months ago, he spent some time thinking about Persistance and the Internet and, above, is a glimpse into his conclusions. --Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Arcadia, on NPR's Morning Edition. Do Give a Listen.

Perfectly lovely story this morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.  If you want to try and understand why I'm so enthusiastic about this play and this playwrite then listen to the story I've embedded below.  It's an impressively thorough story ... for broadcast ... and bothers to pull out some of my favorite quotes: 

A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos; 55 crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars, big bang, black hole – who gives a sh—?

And this one...

To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing!  People were talking about the end of physics; relativity and quantum [physics] looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything! But they only explain the very big and the very small; the universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary side stuff, which is our lives — the things people write poetry about — clouds, daffodils, waterfalls, and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in. These things are full of mystery.

 

Stoppard-arcadia-npr

...If you ever think I'm over the top about Stoppard...

...then re-read the story I'm linking to here.

My heat-seeking Stoppard news robot came across this posting from a publication called Downtown Express.  Review:

Oscar Wilde. George Bernard Shaw. Tom Stoppard. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: Stoppard belongs right up there in that company. Anyone with any doubt is advised to see and then — doubling that pleasure — to read the “Arcadia” that’s at the Barrymore.   ...

It is easy to fall in love with a play. I’ve fallen in love with hundreds of them. But falling in love with “Arcadia” was, for this playgoing journalist, exactly like falling in love with a woman. You love every part of her, everything about her, even the bad parts. The very air and everything within it seems everywhere clearer, brighter — though “Arcadia” seems to me to have no bad parts. Indeed it is an overlay of one exquisite element mixed in with another with another with another.

Love. Sex. Poetry. Scholarship. Accuracy. Dueling. Duplicity. Poetry. Landscape gardening. Time. Space. Physics. Mathematics. Poetry. Lord Byron. Sir Isaac Newton. Television. Poetry. Adultery. The Classical era. The Romantic era…and much, much more.  [more]

I encourage you to read the story because it captures, for me at least, some scale and scope of the play and why it's worth your attention.

NYTimes Talks: Tom Stoppard Interviewed by Patrick Healy

Wonderful interview with Mr. Stoppard. I never get enough of seeing him speak about his work.  --He's always so humble, especially considering what he has achieved.  Enjoy, my friends.   

 

Watch live streaming video from nytimes at livestream.com

The Intersection of Our Interests: Gleick & Stoppard.

A million years ago, I helped a celebrated science writer and a semi-professional bridge player, Uday Ivatury, launch the first NYC ISP focused on consumers:  The Pipeline.  It was a wonderful experience. 

The celebrated science writer was James Gleick and he's as justly celebrated today as he was then when had "only" publish the first two of his books, Chaos and Genius.  Now, he has had his sixth book published, The Information, and the reviews are excellent.  It is also going to be shelved alongside some of the books I've recently written about that address similar issues:  the perils and promise of the information age. 

A recent review caught my eye as it ended up being caught in the same news scan as Mr. Stoppard's clips.  Here's the relevant bit: 

And yet, Gleick remains relatively sanguine on the ability of systems, or networks, to sort themselves. (He writes at length about Wikipedia as a self-policing community, despite the skepticism it provokes among journalists and academics.) Or to remain unsorted, since ultimately there is so much information that "[o]ne can fairly say that even God has forgotten." Toward the end of the book, he recalls the great library of Alexandria, which, beginning in the third century BC, "maintained the greatest collection of knowledge on earth, then and for centuries to come." Among its hundreds of thousands of scrolls, Gleick tells us, were "the dramas of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides; the mathematics of Euclid, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes; poetry, medical texts, star charts, mystical writings. … And then it burned."

The point, of course, is that everything is perishable, that the universe itself is erasable — except that it's not. "All the lost plays of the Athenians!" he declares, citing a line from Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia." "How can we sleep for grief?" The answer is simple: "By counting our stock."

This, Gleick concludes, is the great rule of the universe, and of the library, both actual and figurative, as well. "The library will endure," he writes; "it is the universe. … We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence" — just as we have always done.  [more]

I wonder if Mr. Gleick has had a chance to see the Broadway revival of Arcadia?  It's bound to be one of his favorites. 

NYTimes, With Stoppard, Chance Always Plays a Role

I love the fact Mr. Stoppard worries so much about just three minutes, what he calls "100 beats."  After all this time and all those accolades about the play, he still worries about how he might be able to make it better. 

The difficulty in finding lines to cut is not surprising. To many critics “Arcadia” is Mr. Stoppard’s masterwork, the perfect blend of brains and emotion, wit and heartache. Moving between 1809 and the present at a Derbyshire country house, it offers up a mystery for two academics who clumsily try to piece together whether a volatile mix of sex and poetry led to a duel there nearly 200 years earlier. During the 1990s it was one of the most frequently produced plays around the world.

Still, those three minutes trouble him. “When you write, it’s making a certain kind of music in your head,” he explained. “There’s a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole I’m writing to that drum, rather than the psychological process” — the time it takes for one character to digest and respond to what another said — “which creates its own drumbeat.” [more]

I didn't know Arcadia was one of the most frequently produced plays in the 1990s.  Makes me wonder about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead during the sixties and seventies. 

 

 

Your Assignment: Compare and Contrast.

Compare this video Apple produced to celebrate its tenth anniversary, ...

To the previously posted video from IBM.  What do we learn?

The IBM Centennial Film.

I've done some work for IBM and it was some of the most rewarding work I've ever done.  The people I worked with were very bright and very good at what they did.  Specifically, I worked with the Entry Systems Division (aka the PC group) and the Advanced Technology Group (aka Unix workstations).  You probably have a fair impression of what IBM has accomplished in the past 100 years, but this wonderfully produced film might remind you of a few things. 

The New Yorker, 2.14.11: The Information

Running the risk of being the last one to tell you, I must be sure you notice an article from a couple of weeks ago in The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik:  The Information.   The article follows a theme I've noticed and commented on here for several months now:  the spate of new books about the good, the bad and the ugly about the Information Revolution. 

Gopnik shelves the new books into three different different sections: 

Never-Betters, better-Nevers and the Ever-Wasers.  Huh? 

The Never-Betters believe that we’re on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be free and democratic, news will be made from the bottom up, love will reign, and cookies will bake themselves. The Better-Nevers think that we would have been better off if the whole thing had never happened, that the world that is coming to an end is superior to the one that is taking its place, and that, at a minimum, books and magazines create private space for minds in ways that twenty-second bursts of information don’t. The Ever-Wasers insist that at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and that a new way of organizing data and connecting users is always thrilling to some and chilling to others—that something like this is going on is exactly what makes it a modern moment.   [more]

Gopnik has done an amazing job collecting and the revelant titles and authors and this is article is a "must read" summary of these three important threads of thought  --So go read it alreaday!

San Francisco Symphony: Celebrating 100 Years.

One of the many benefits of living in the Bay Area is enjoying Michael Tilson Thomas.  It must be clear to you, or, with very little effort, become clear to you that Maestro Thomas is both a leading music director and the leading innovator in music direction. 

The San Francisco Symphony is preparing to celebrate it's 100th anniversary and Maestro Thomas and his team have put together an amazing roster of performances and events.  Be sure to take a look because I guarantee you there's something that will interest you no matter what your taste or interest.  [Here's a complete rundown from the San Francisco Chronicle of the season.]

Here are some of the highlights that fit into my own aesthetic agenda:

• Sept. 21, 22, 24, 25 (m) - Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Katarina Karnéus, mezzo-soprano; women of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus; Ragnar Bohlin, director. Mahler: Symphony No. 3.
• Nov. 23, 25, 26 - Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Gil Shaham, violin. Wagner: Prelude to Act III of "Lohengrin"; Brahms: Violin Concerto; Brahms/ Schoenberg: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor.
• March 8, 9 - American Mavericks Festival: Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Paul Jacobs, organ. Copland: Orchestral Variations; Harrison: Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra; Ives/Brant: "A Concord Symphony."
• March 15, 16, 17 - American Mavericks Festival: Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Emanuel Ax, piano; Mason Bates, laptop; St. Lawrence String Quartet; San Francisco Symphony Chorus; Ragnar Bohlin, director. Mason Bates: "Mass Transmission"; John Adams: "Absolute Jest"; Feldman: "Piano and Orchestra"; Varèse: "Amériques."
• June 14, 15, 16, 17 (m) - Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Yuja Wang, piano. Fauré: "Pavane"; Sibelius: Symphony No. 3; Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3.
• Oct. 23 - Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Johannes Moser, electric cello; John Adams: "Tromba lontana"; Enrico Chapela: Concerto for Electric Cello; Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5.

Here's a snippet from the NYTimes about the symphony's centennary season: 

With his strong theatrical roots, Mr. Tilson Thomas is better positioned to turn concerts into multimedia experiences than many other music directors.

His grandparents Bessie and Boris Thomashefsky were Yiddish theater stars. In 2005, Mr. Tilson Thomas based a musical revue, “The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of Life in the Yiddish Theater,” on them.

“Michael Tilson Thomas has been at the vanguard of multimedia programming,” said Chad Smith, the vice president for artistic planning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Although Mr. Tilson Thomas relishes exploring the scenic possibilities of the concert hall, his strength as a stage director emphasizes subtlety over spectacle.  [more]

The New Yorker's John Lahr Inteviews Tom Stoppard on Arcadia Revival and the Craft

According to me, there are too few interviews at all w/ Mr. Stoppard, much less video interviews.  So, here's a link to a brand new video from The New Yorker. 

PS:  Does John Lahr look his father or what?!??!?!

New Yorker, 3.7.11: A Day on Broadway w/ Tom Stoppard

You, dear friend, know I'm excited about the revival of Stoppard's Arcadia that's now in previews on Broadway.  Apparently, The New Yorker is too as they've just published (online) one of its "casuals" that follows Mr. Stoppard through the course of an afternoon and early evening.  --The especially good part of the article is learning something I neve knew before about Mr. Stoppard's work in particular and in general what works (and why) on the stage.  Herewith:

“Arcadia” exists as a result of Stoppard’s having read, twenty or so years ago, several books about physics, mathematics, landscape gardening, and a Peter Quennell biography of Lord Byron. As the dialogue ping-pongs along, the audience courts the peculiar risk of listening too carefully. “If you take a speech of ten lines—and this is true of Shakespeare and true of Tom—if that becomes too slow, there is no way you will comprehend it,” Leveaux said. “Too fast and it becomes a blur of words and you retreat defeated from the effort. There’s a kind of ideal resonant tempo.”

“That fits with what I think about playwriting,” Stoppard said. “It’s about controlling the flow of information—arriving at the right length and the right speed and in the right order. ‘Arcadia’ is obviously a play that’s got interesting things in it that are perhaps quite hard to grasp. But it’s also a detective form, and designed to be a recreation. If the audience is made to do not enough work, they resent it without knowing it. Too much and they get lost. There’s a perfect pace to be found. And a perfect place that is different for every line of the play.”  [more]

By the by, as a public relations professional, it would be entirely remiss of me not to congratulation Ms. Emily Meagher of the agency Boneau/Bryan-Brown on this splendid placement.  So:  Congratulations, Ms. Meagher!

The Man Filling George Plimpton's Shoes...

 ... and, according to this article, is doing a very good job on all fronts:

His desk has an old-fashioned Rolodex, a vintage Lucky Strike case and a neat bowl of paper clips. A small, cream-colored saucer doubled as an ashtray for his Marlboro Reds. A martini glass, mostly drained of Tanqueray, rested near a typed manuscript.

Wearing a slim gray suit and humming with nervous energy, Mr. Stein was ready to embark on a few hours of ambitious party-hopping: a book party in TriBeCa for his friend, the cross-dressing literary sensation Jon-Jon Goulian; a Harper’s magazine event attended by the writer Zadie Smith and a late-night dinner with friends at the French bistro Raoul’s in SoHo.

Bacchanalian nights are practically inscribed in the job description. Last spring, Mr. Stein was anointed the new editor of The Paris Review, only the third to hold the title in the magazine’s 58-year history, and the second to follow George Plimpton, himself a legendary New York social figure.  [more]

By the way, just in case you didn't know, The Paris Review has published it's archives of author interviews and this was, originally, what drew me to the magazine, as, I would guess, so many others.  Haven't read one lately?  Go to the archive, type in the name of your favorite author and then find out h0w they did what they did.  Now. 

Yet Another Reason I Miss New York...

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is hosting a Catherine Deneuve film festival:  twenty-five movies (twenty-five!) movies that span her career. 

Sweet goodness!

About one million years ago, I took a day off from work to stand in line at Bloomingdales to meet Ms. Deneuve on the occassion of the introduction of her fragrance to America.  I had purchased several lovely 8x10 phan photos and she graciously signed one of them for me.  Of course it's one of my treasured posessions. 

Here's a link to the film festival.

Playbill's Cover Story: Arcadia.

Just in case you don't know what I want for Passover, I'll make it crystal clear:  The new poster for Arcadia.  For some who's lived their lives at the intersection between technology and Stoppard, there's nothing quite as compelling as the image of a white rose desolving and resolved into a length of cat5. 

Playbill has published a story about Arcadia and, while I wouldn't describe the article as having any surprises, let me give you a snippets from the article: 

Arcadia, according to producers, “is set in April 1809 in a stately home in Derbyshire. Thomasina, a gifted pupil, proposes a startling theory, beyond her comprehension. All around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries. Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard are piecing together puzzling clues, curiously recalling those events of 1809, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.”  [more]

I'm not sure why the author of the article had to attribute the summary of the plot to the producer as if he hadn't read the play himself (oh) but that's the way it worked out. 

And, really people, if you can arrange for me to get a post of the show, you would receive proper public adoration.

Septimus, from Arcadia...

From the last scene...

When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries we will be alone on an empty shore. 

Regarding Julie Taymor's Vision of The Tempest...

I'm moved to write this after spending a few minutes this morning reading the New York Times eviscerate Ms. Taymor's Broadway production of Spiderman.  For at least two months now, I've held the belief her excellent version of The Tempest would somehow fall in the shadow cast by the controversy of her current work on Broadway.  --After viewing the movie myself, I'm not sure it is collateral damage in the war between Ms. Taymor and the media or, perhaps, it simply hasn't earned the media's attention on its own merits. But, regarding its merits, we need to notice somethings before the lights dim and the first reel threads through the machine.

Ms. Taymor has earned our attention and respect.  Her collected work in film is original and striking.  Where do we being?  Frida?  Titus?  Across the Universe?  Pick three.  Pick two.  Pick ust one and you hold a reason for you to pay attention to what ever Ms. Taymor decides to do next.  Just within the realm of Shakespeare, her vision of Titus is unforgettable and purchases my constant interest. 

The Tempest isn't a perfect film but I won't dwell on it's shortcomings.  I mention this just to signal I'm not a relentless fanboy and, perhaps, persuade you I have a balanced point-of-view.  On the other hand, Ms. Taymor's production of The Tempest has forever changed how I understand and respond to the work.  Just one small change in interpretation changes my reckoning:  Casting Helen Mirren as Prospera.  Honestly, I will never be able to experience The Tempest ever again without thinking how much better it works with Prospera instead of Prospero.  Prospera's relationship with Caliban, Miranda, Gonzalo and Ariel ... every relationship makes so much more sense and feels more genuine.  I left the theater thinking to myself that this was, without a doubt, what Shakespeare had intended but unable to stage due to his time and the public's taste. 

It is a shame and a pity The Tempest didn't enjoy a wider release because the public has missed the opportunity to experience the film as Ms. Taymor intended.  On the other hand, I'm absolutely certain The Tempest will survive a very long time as the best way into the play for thousands of English Lit students. 

Overall, I'm not treking to Broadway to see Spiderman as I don't understand the comic book genre, but am quite interested in anything Ms. Taymor touches next. 

Now, if we could just persuade Ms. Taymor to tackle Julius Caesar. 

Billy Crudup on Arcadia

I was priviledged to see Mr. Crudup in The Coast of Uptopia.  Mr. Crudup played Belinsky and Belinsky turned out to be one of my favorite characters in the trilogy, even though he only appeared in the first two plays. 

I deeply and sincerely wish I had seen Mr. Crudup's turn as Septimus Hoge in the original Broadway production of Arcadia.  Now, I sincerely wish I could see Mr. Crudup play the role of Bernard Nightingale in that same play. 

Just this week, I listened to the BBC production of Arcadia and enjoyed it oh, so much.  The BBC production is from 1993 with Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy, Samuel West, Rufus Sewell, Emma Fielding and Harriet Walter.  It is wonderful and I wish I could refer you to that production but am delighted to let you know that the LA Theatre Works has created a audio version of the play that is almost just as good.  (I express the caveat "almost" due to the appearance of Felicity Kendall in the BBC production as I am particularly fond of her an anything by Mr. Stoppard or anyone else for that matter.) 

But back to the matter.

For those who know that play, you know that Septimus and Nightingale are counterparts to one another.  Septimus is a character in the 18thC part of the play and Bernard is a character in the 20th.  Here's what Crudup recently said about the change of roles: 

“When you’re introduced into the [Broadway] community in a role like Septimus Hodge, you get to pretend you’re this thrilling romantic figure.  I was only six months out of graduate school at the time, so I got to ride on his coattails for a few years. Bernard, however, is a big, pompous buffon, so I’m hoping not to ride his coattails." 

Arcadia begins previews on February 26 and is schedule to open on March 17 at the Ethel Barrymore. 

Nashville's Production of Stoppard's Arcadia

From the first scene of the play.

Book Titles That Make Me Sad.

Bedtime reading? 

Et in Arcadia Ego

One of Tom Stoppard's best plays, Arcadia, is in rehearsal in NYC and I'm coveting a quick trip to see it. 

In the meantime, gentle reader, here's a quick taste:

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.

Wilfrid Sheed, Of Blessed Memory

Today comes word Wilfrid Sheed has passed and when I saw the obituary in today's NY Times, I had to pause because I met Mr. Sheed twenty-eight years ago and then, he impressed me as someone quite infirm.  --Of course I was greatly mistaken. 

I was a Very Young Person, toiling in the Manhattan caverns of book publishing and Mr. Sheed had found at temporary home at my employer, E.P. Dutton.  He had written one of his memoirs, this one about Clare Boothe Luce and how the Great Lady sheltered and nurtured Mr. Sheed.  It's one of those books that reads as if we are listening to someone reminice while we're both comfortably enscounced in the Algonquin's Oak Room on a winter afternoon with just enough sherry. 

The fact that Mr. Sheed was a polio survivor probably influenced how I regarded him, but there was more than that.  Mr. Sheed was a connection to another time and sensibility.  He was a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford Univeristy and had much, much more in common with Evelyn Waugh and Chesterton than the most popular writer of his own era, John Irving (and that's another story I'll need to type up one day). 

God bless you, Mr. Sheed. 

Shakespeare in Love: A Play!?!?!??!?!?

Very Recently, I posted regarding the possibility of a sequel to Shakespeare in Love and my ... skepticism.  Now comes the news that the movie may be turned into a ... play.  

Okay, overall, I think that there are been many successful transitions from the stage to the screen and I'm trying to recall any, some, that transitioned the other direction.  My concern is this:  How am I going to feel about a play that assembles a cast that has to compete -- in my mind -- with this one:  

Philip Henslowe

Geoffrey Rush

Will Shakespeare

Joseph Fiennes

Viola De Lesseps

Gwyneth Paltrow

Queen Elizabeth

Judi Dench

Ned Alleyn

Ben Affleck

Hugh Fennyman

Tom Wilkinson

Lambert

Steven O'Donnell

Christopher Marlowe

Rupert Everett

Frees

Tim McMullen

Makepeace--The Preacher

Steven Beard

Dr Moth

Antony Sher

Will Kempe

Patrick Barlow

Richard Burbage

Martin Clunes

Rosaline

Sandra Reinton

Tilney--Master of the Revels

Simon Callow

Lady in Waiting

Bridget McConnel

Lady in Waiting

Georgie Glen

Henry Condell

Nicholas Boulton

Nurse

Imelda Staunton

Lord Wessex

Colin Firth

Crier

Desmond McNamara

Nol

Barnaby Kay

Ralph Bashford

Jim Carter

Peter--The Stage Manager

Paul Bigley

Actor in Tavern

Jason Round

Barman

Rupert Farley

Auditionee No 1

Adam Barker

John Webster

Joe Roberts

Auditionee No 2

Harry Gostelow

Auditionee No 3

Alan Cody

Wabash

Mark Williams

John Hemmings

David Curtiz

James Hemmings

Gregor Truter

Boatman No 1

Simon Day

Lady De Lesseps

Jill Baker

Scullery Maid

Amber Glossop

Master Plum

Robin Davies

Servant

Hywel Simons

Sir Robert De Lesseps

Nicholas LePrevost

Edward Pope

Timothy Kightley

Augustine Philips

Mark Saban

George Bryan

Bob Barrett

James Armitage

Roger Morlidge

Sam Gosse

Daniel Brocklebank

Boatman No 2

Roger Frost

Chambermaid

Rebecca Charles

Lord in Waiting

Richard Gold

Whore No 1

Rachel Clarke

Whore No 2

Lucy Speed

Whore No 3

Patricia Potter

Makepeace's Neighbor

John Ramm

Paris/Lady Montague

Martin Neeley

 

 

Shakespeare in Love: The Sequel?!?!?!?!?!?

I know that someone, somewhere loves Shakespeare in Love more than I do ... probably.  But I feel confident letting you, dear reader, know that I've seen the movie more times than you have and, without fail, tears well up in my eyes Every ... Single ... Time. 

Really.

So, why do I feel so actively ambivelant, nay, discouraged, when I read late last year that the Weinstein company has announced it is planning a sequel.  I could make the jokes myself, but have the good sense to let the New York Times take the lead: 

Where does one go after “Shakespeare in Love,” which ends with its title character immersing himself in the writing of “Twelfth Night” while his sweetheart, Viola, is bound for the New World? What comes next? “Shakespeare in Tears”? “Shakespeare in Bed, Eating Bon-Bons”? “Shakespeare in a Disappointing Marriage With Anne Hathaway, Running Out the Clock While Thinking of Gwyneth Paltrow“?  [more]

Again...  Really?

Honestly, the only person who could possibly pull this off is the author of the original, Tom Stoppard.  Only the person who can build a play out of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern can possibly stand in that small, unpainted corner of the floor and find a way to the window. 

Amen.

Joyce Carol Oates: Fanning the Flame to Combustion with Her Wings.

The photo to the left explains the popularity of the Hipstamatic application for the iPhone.  But other than that, it's a photo of Joyce Carol Oates and her beloved husband Raymond Smith from outside their home in Windsor, Ontario in 1970, about nine years after they were married. 

The photograph is from Ms. Oates personal collection and was posted to The New Yorker's website to accompany the publication of Ms. Oates memoir of her husband's death -- and I highly recommend you read the article from the December 13, 2010 issue.

Ms. Oates has a special place in my heart for three reasons. 

1.  Most importantly, she is an amazing writer who has has proven she can write anything, froma Gothic Romance to a study on the sweet science of boxing.  Her writing is lovely and stories always capture my imagination.

2. & 3.  She's ... odd, prolific, and oddly prolific.  I was blessed with the opportunity to cross paths her a couple of times.   My first job in NYC was at E.P.Dutton, one of her publishers.  One publisher was not enough to keep up with her.  While I worked at Dutton, she published two sizable novels, Bellfleur and Angels of Light.  Inbetween, there were the short stories, criticism, novellas and her work on husband Smith's journal,  Actually there was so much work to published, she put two different pen names to work in addition to her own.  Oh, and the poetry.  Oh, and there was her own literary journal, The Ontario Review.  --Oh, and there was the full-time gig at Princeton.  Because she was so busy, and because her audience isn't really susceptible to media hype, Ms. Oates didn't do many interviews, but she did a radio interview while I was there that was organized by one of my bosses, Jean Rawitt.  Ms. Rawitt returned to the office following the interview and the legendary Lois Shapiro, the director of pulicity at Dutton (and latter The Free Press), asked Ms. Rawitt how it went.  Apparently, according to Jean, the interviewer asked Ms. Oates how it was she was able to produce such a prodigious volume of work.  Ms. Oates replied that it wasn't hard at all, she just typed up what the voices in her head had to say.  --And that was the end of the interviews for a while. 

And I admire someone who, in the course of their profession, transcends this grey, slumbering realm and enters into another world that is obviously more alive and vibrant and, of course, imaginative and vivid.  And this is how I usually select my favorite artists.  Can an ordinary human, scuffling around here in the shadows, create art on the order of Moby Dick? The Ring of the Nibelung? Bach's Cello Sonatas?  Leaves of Grass? The second side of Abby Road?  Obviously, I don't think so.  At the very least, these works result from -- at least -- a dialog between the artist and a higher power and, more likely, a visit to this other realm where, like this Prometheus, she steals some fire and, on return to here, some spark survives.  And the artist tends after the ember until she's able to fan it into flame. 

Ms. Oates is a wild and uncontrollable force whose gusts ignites all those tiny sparks she tends to with such loving care.  I've always worried about her because, she's so small, so thin-boned, those gust would snap her or that such flames would consume her.  But, just like the thin-boned bird, her wings carry her above us all.  Amen.

What Stoppard Read and Enjoyed This Year.

The Guardian ran a very interesting story this past week.  In the article, some forty or so writers are asked which book they read this year made the biggest impression on them.  And, of course, I'm writing this because Mr. Stoppard was queried.

Just based on what Mr. Stoppard writes, I've always assumed he focuses on classics and works that will, someday, end up in his plays.  Instead, I learned that Mr. Stoppard is up-to-date on his non-fiction and fiction.  Here's what he has to say:

I started the year by reading a dozen books on the Wall Street implosion. Even if you're bored with it all, The Big Short by Michael Lewis (Allen Lane) is unmissable: and if you're not, How Markets Fail by John Cassidy (Penguin) has the best, deepest backstory, and is as well written as you would expect from someone who covers economics for the New Yorker.

This year, too, I enormously enjoyed the last 518 pages of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (Fourth Estate), which I had put aside in 2001 to read when I had time. I am now on page 14 of Freedom. Highly recommended.

And here's a link to the entire article. 

Stoppard + Tolstoy = Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina

When last we checked in, Sir Tom Stoppard was penning a BBC TV version of Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End.  the mamoth work that became a cornerstone for moderism.  This just in:  Stoppard is reportedly writing a sceenplay of Anna Karenina, also for the BBC and it will star Keira Knightley. 

Here's the report from the Indie Wire: 

Working Title has been developing a new adaptation, written by the great playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, and that a script’s due before Christmas. The studio’s favorite son, Joe Wright (”Pride & Prejudice,” “Atonement”) is attached to the new version, and in the spring, the director’s likely to make a decision as to whether to direct this, or the dark Abi Morgan-scripted take on “The Little Mermaid” announced earlier in the year. [more]

It warms my heart to find out that, at 73-years-old, Mr. Stoppard is not slowing down at all and that there's so much to anticipate.