Here’s an equation that might stump even the greatest of mathematicians: Brainiac Tom Stoppard + a heralded, smartypants play + a capable and engaging ensemble = almost your entire audience scattering at intermission.
I’ve not seen bugs scurrying this fast since opening my first — and last — pizza box for delivery as a resident of New York City.
Sure, “Arcadia” is one of those plays that’s smarter than you are. Way smarter. Unless you’re up on (and this is just a short list): philosophy, mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, algorithms, landscape design, Byron, botany, chaos vs. determinism (as it applies to love), romanticism vs. classicism (as it applies to love), and the apocalypse (as it applies to love).
But all that blahditty-blah aside, “Arcadia” is at heart a popcorn mystery — and a compelling one at that. And there’s nothing about Firehouse Theatre’s production that doesn’t deserve an audience — for the entire play, even. By the sheer audacity of the challenge, it’s a huge accomplishment for the little company started by the late John Hand.
But as I (and the Oceanic Six who returned) contemplated director Christopher Leo’s competent Act II, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what we’ve brought upon ourselves. In our rush to please theatergoers with 90-minute, no-intermission, short-attention-span plays, have we trained them to lose patience with full-length, abstract and intellectually challenging plays? Do we need our theater bite-sized and spoon-fed for us to have any patience for it?
Perhaps. Then again, “Arcadia” is: a) a period piece (and one not invoking the name of Jane Austen), b) 10 feet above most heads and . . . c) British. Believe me, that Stoppard (“The Coast of Utopia”) can be a real fractal in your side. So yeah, maybe this is all our fault.
Arcadia (the word) is defined as anyplace, real or imaginary, that offers peace and simplicity, and “Arcadia” (the play) offers little of either. Scenes alternate between 1809 and 2008 in an English country house where, in modern times, two sparring scholars are trying to unravel whether the unseen poet Lord Byron seduced a married woman and killed her husband in a duel. If true, it would be the literary discovery of the century.
Enjoying the play at this level alone is quite possible, maybe even preferable. The larger themes are daunting but can be accessibly distilled to something akin to Denver Center’s “Doubt,” a similar exploration of absolute certainty in the face of uncertain evidence.
But this is a sprawling, interweaving epic. In 1809, doomed, precocious 13- year-old math prodigy Thomasina (the delightfully whimsical Jamie Ann Romero) is being tutored by witty lothario Septimus (Jono Waldman, who’s really blossoming into a leading man).
The math whiz’s delightful interest in the meaning of “carnal embrace” sets up the play’s central opposite of physics vs. the physical. It’s about how sex and its resultant irrationality and hormones render all things scientific moot. Yet she’s also doodling out ideas that will one day become the blueprint for modern physics. She’s a girl on the verge of womanhood who is looking for God in numbers.
Of greater interest to arrogant ’08 writer Bernard (a too-polite Gregory Adams) is whether the critic (Lord Byron) killed both the poet (Jason Maxwell) and his poetry. Academic Hannah (the ever-reliable Terry Ann Watts) is studying radical landscape changes that were transforming the estate at the time, but she gets sucked into the sex scandal, as well. These past and present mysteries eventually bleed into one nice, simultaneous bit of stage action.
Leo’s straightforward production most excels in simply keeping the storytelling on track, but his ensemble (a little thin beyond his leads), doesn’t fully immerse itself in the script’s irreverent comic potential. We know there’s more to be discovered here because in 1993, New York Times curmudgeon Vincent Camby described “Arcadia” as “like a dream of levitation: You’re instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you’re about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.”
This production doesn’t reach that level of engagement, but neither did the Denver Center Theatre Company’s all-star effort of 1996. But it’s a still a great step forward for Firehouse, which is to be commended for giving us something difficult . . . and shouldn’t we embrace difficult from time to time?
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Arcadia” *** (out of four stars)
Period mystery. Presented by the Firehouse Theatre Company at the John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place, Lowry. Written by Tom Stoppard. Through May 17. 2 hours, 40 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and April 28, 6 p.m. Sundays. $14-$17. 303-562-3232 or
