The heady complexities of Tom Stoppard — a playwright whose allusions contain allusions to allusions — have been amply noted. But even though his writing shows unusual political neutrality, he’s among the greatest living playwrights because of the passion of his characters. Once a Stoppardian person unleashes the meaning of the universe, it’s like an over-articulate revolutionary at the barricades. When done right, you get smacked right in the chops.
Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia,” which recently finished its run at New York City’s Lincoln Center, has that riveting, hopelessly impassioned quality. And so does director Charles Newell’s provocatively assertive revival of “Arcadia” at Chicago’s Court Theatre. Even as Stoppard’s characters — the pursued from the early 19th Century and the pursuers from the late 20th — yak on about gardens, Newtonian physics, Lord Byron, mathematics and sex, the ever-smart Newell gives you the sense here that they’re all a bunch of spluttering, well-dressed atomic particles whom he has dangerously unleashed on our world, much as Enrico Fermi and his nuclear crew once did in 1942, just a bit farther south on Ellis Avenue.
“Arcadia” is a difficult work. Three verbose hours long, stuffed with myriad themes and set, simultaneously, on the same English country estate nearly 200 years apart as a bunch of mostly self-serving academics try to uncover the past, early productions of the play (such as Michael Maggio’s famous version at the Goodman Theatre) were dominated by visual splendor. In 2004, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company offered a simpler, clearer staging, without the grand vista of the all-important garden outside the French windows. But it was, perhaps, a tad prosaic.
Newell’s approach is similarly lean (Matthew York’s set is mostly a table and a bookcase), but he uncoils the play quite differently, exploding its usual realistic style. Newell’s actors are happy to address the audience — or climb on top of a table or splutter their way into the aisles. Unusual spotlights highlight ideas — and, although it’s still rooted in reality, the nature of this smart theatrical universe wisely keeps you guessing.
Not all the stylized movement works (as ever, you can see the influence on Newell of the likes of Anne Bogart) and the early section of Act 2 sag for lack of appropriately bold ideas. But many of the scenes are quite dazzling in their intensity and excitement. It’s a very stimulating and highly enjoyable close to the Court season.
Smashing performances abound, including the suave Grant Goodman as the tutor Septimus Hodge and, especially, Erik Hellman as Valentine Coverly, that character’s rough modern equivalent. Tortured, smart and weirdly emotional, Hellman offers a close-to-perfect performance. And Mary Beth Fisher (as a modern writer) and Bethany Caputo (as a prodigy from the past) offer stellar turns. Caputo really takes some risks and makes her choices work. In fact, the whole show works best in its boldest directorial moments, which makes you think it could have gone even further.
Like David Mamet, Stoppard loves to ding academics. And as the straw professor of the play, actor Kevin McKillip plays things a tad too broadly for my tastes, but he’s most certainly funny.
That’s part of the point of “Arcadia” — might as well laugh as we careen into some universal block hole. But what of the play’s main theme?
Every time you see this fabulously complex comedy, you come up with something else.
Interestingly enough, Newell’s fresh production now makes me think this is a prescient play about sex and global warming, which wasn’t even on the radar in 1993 (global warming that is). Through his pinball characters, Stoppard has us discover that the action of bodies in heat causes dissipation. So the world can’t ever be fully renewed.
And the future — as if we didn’t know already — is disorder.
“Arcadia”
When: Through June 10
Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 3 hours
Tickets: $28-54 at 773-753-4472
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cjones5@tribune.com
