David Leveaux? NO GO. An Arcadia Review.

[ZiggyCringe]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 3:15am

I love this play. It's Stoppard's best. The new production is half great, half horrible. Stoppard remains great. The cast is mostly terrific. David Leveaux screwed this production.

First of all, enough with this "Let's do the Brechtian production, with no set, and no scenery, and let's let the actors make the play happen for the first time." Yes, this can work. But not when the original production was so sensational. It didn't work for "Nine," and it didn't work for "Fiddler." Stop it. "Arcadia" is NOT "Our Town."

Leveuax's blocking was bizarre. During the most important moments of the show, people were standing 40 feet away from each other trying to connect. In the second act, when the two worlds come together, nothing came together. It was chaos, and unintelligible. It's genius Stoppard, and the audience just coughed, confusedly.

The cast was not bad, but they were fighting an uphill battle. Raul came off the best, he made the whole (very difficult) "math monologue" make sense. I thought Crudup was clownish. It's a very difficult character, as he's a bufoon and yet often the arbitrar of sense in the piece. He's a terrific actor, but I think the director steered him the wrong way.

As I was walking out, in one ear, I heard someone say "This is the Best Play I've Ever Seen," and in the other ear, I heard someone say "This is the most boring play I've ever seen," and then I turned around and Tom Stoppard had heard both of those things. When I saw the show at Lincoln Center in the 90's, everybody LOVED the show. But it had a great director. David Leveuax, you ain't it.

I've seen six productions of this show, including two high school productions and two communinity theatre productions. I always felt the play was indestructible. Until Leveaux got his hands on it.

Updated On: 3/16/11 at 03:15 AM

[mallardo]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:10am

Unless the show has been radically revised since it played London I disagree with everything you've said. I thought it was a beautiful revelatory production. And I too LOVE the play. Of course I'm pretty sure the London cast was superior to the Broadway cast so that may be a factor.

[wickedfan]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:53am

Also, just a simple fact: not everybody loved the original production. In fact, a good number of people hated it, resulting in numerous walk-outs at intermission.

[wonkit]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 8:02am

Two points. I was one of the people who didn't love the Lincoln Center production and found it bloodless and boring. And the play is specifically set in an empty room, so that the table can be the focus of the set dressing. I don't love this particular set but its emptiness is intentional, not penny-pinching.

[ken8631]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 9:08am

Bought tickets only because Raul is in it and wife wants to see him in anything he does - lol....

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 9:25am

I spoke with a very dear friend who LOVES the play with a passion and was let down by this current production.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 9:59am

I am actually not a fan of the play at all (it's my least favorite Stoppard). This production exacerbated all of the things I hate about the play. My problem is not that the play is pretentious; it's that the play THINKS it's pretentious, and that it's a good thing. All of the scientific clammering on is stuff you learn in high school or first few years of college. I hate the "here comes another revelation" aspect because it's so false. The audience sees the revelation before the characters do. To counter that, you need direction that pulls the audience in the opposite direction of the text, and this production does not do that.

I am actually a fan of Leveaux's, and I was so disappointed by the direction of this revival. Also, Ziggy, I couldn't disagree more about Raul. I thought he overacted the whole thing. Even when it wasn't his scene, he was doing things to pull the eye of the audience on him while there was other dialogue going on. I think the three best BY FAR were Tom Riley (fantastic as Septimus), Billy Crudup (good in the show, though not his personal best), and Lia Williams (who is giving an acting master class).

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 10:38am

"During the most important moments of the show, people were standing 40 feet away from each other trying to connect"

I'll give you this one. To me, that was the most annoying thing about the staging. It was as though Leveaux (hey, that rhymes!) wasn't comfortable with the minimal sets and wanted to use every inch of the stage available, making for very uncomfortable staging at times.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 10:51am

The previews discussions about this show have been pretty fascinating. I have absolutely zero sense of the quality of the production.

Updated On: 3/16/11 at 10:51 AM

[Owen22]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 11:01am

I love this production. I love that Hannah is much more physical (the original production's Hannahs both here and in London were much more "girly") and having Hannah be a perhaps lesbian (both Samnatha Bond and Lia Williams are very similar, obviously the way Leveaux sees the character). However, I am surprised Leveauux goes with older Valentines, that seems to throw the dynamic off between the characters somewhat. I loved the original Arcadia, and if this production didn't hit me the same way, its only because the discovery of my now favorite Stoppard play was obviously not available to this production. But everything Leveaux did was spot on--including the brilliant blocking.

[wonkit]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 11:16am

I didn't notice the blocking (that's a good thing, right?) but now that you mention it, I think the distances between people were a rather appropriate visual expression of the characters being remote from one another emotionally. "Septimus, what is carnal embrace?" - they are separated by a twelve foot table, and everyone in the entire scene stands away from everyone else, like patients in a TB waiting room! It made the waltzing at the end very sensual. Hell, it made Valentine's use of Hannah's finger to run the computer into a caro-carnis moment. I don't think a cozy set with lots of physical proximity makes much sense with ARCADIA. But I love this production, so this is all my reaction to it.

And please, do we have to have the mandatory "Stoppard is pretentious" discussion? Stoppard is demanding of his audiences. Pretentious is when you demonstrate that you don't know anything but expect people to admire you anyway. Like Bernard.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 11:40am

And please, do we have to have the mandatory "Stoppard is pretentious" discussion?

No... we in fact don't. If you read my post, I said the play ISN'T pretentious, as many people seem to think that it is. It's TRYING to be pretentious, but instead I think it comes across as incredibly fake. I would welcome the pretension if it were genuine, but it's not. I agree with you that Stoppard is demanding of his audience. That's what I like about him. I have no problem with what many people seem to think is pretentious about him. MY point is that Arcadia is NOT demanding of its audience in the same way some of his other plays are. I think it babies the audience while trying to carry around this veil of "false pretension".

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 12:14pm

Just so we're clear here -- your belief is that Stoppard's intention in writing ARCADIA was that the audience perceive the play as pretentious? You do maintain that he was not successful in this... but you actually believe he wanted people to see it that way... as pretentious... when he wrote it? Or am I not getting something?

[wonkit]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 12:48pm

What growl said.

ETA: Most people would consider failed pretension to be a good thing. Updated On: 3/16/11 at 12:48 PM

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 1:13pm

All's I know is that when I did this show during undergrad -- and I didn't go to a school with no dummies, mind -- some really very bright people who attended consistently expressed delight with being so intellectually challenged by a piece of theater... math, biology, and humanities students and professors alike -- others, too, no doubt... but very specifically those three branches of academia, I remember.

I also remember myself and fellow actors going through our tech week making new discoveries about the play on a nightly basis, not just thematically and emotionally, but even in the plot mechanics of the crisscrossing and overlapping stories. That production ended up being one of the strongest done by the department during my time there -- or, at least, was often (and still is) spoken of that way by our peers.

So maybe I'm just overestimating the intelligence of my old college community... but I certainly don't think that Stoppard is any less challenging in ARCADIA than he is in his other words, and to whatever degree you believe that to be true or not, I most definitely don't think he treats the audience like babies, for fear of them not keeping up. He may do what's reasonable for any playwright to do to keep the most physics-stupid person in the audience dramatically invested so that they don't drop out entirely when the talk turns to math and geometry, but spoon-feed he does not.

Just my zero-point-zero-two cents.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 1:49pm

^ Haha, I re-read my post and see where the confusion lies. I will try to be more articulate. I don't think he necessarily aimed to make it pretentious. I suppose I meant to say he tried to make it "uber intelligent." A lot of people SEE this as pretentious. But I find it neither pretentious nor intelligent (a.k.a. I disagree with most of the audience members and the playwright simultaneously). The only point I will disagree with you on, growl, is that I do feel that he spoon-feeds the audience. In his other plays, he makes the audience jump to the conclusion from something that was said. In Arcadia it's all "so here is a fact we never knew before... explain what that means... what then are its implications???!!!" And by saying "HERE are the implications", it's allowing the audience members to know what the next "discovery" is going to be before it even happens. I consider that spoon-feeding.

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 4:36pm

This is the best thread I've ever seen.

No wait, it's the most boring thread I've ever seen.

I can't decide.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:00pm

Not gonna lie... that made me lol.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:11pm

Ah, bjh2114, I understand now where you're coming from. We may be at a agree-to-disagree point about Stoppard's treatment of his subjects because, having spent quite a bit of time buried in that text, I don't see where he telegraphs his reveals or hoists the audience on his back to slog through... I mean, if you have specific examples on hand and would like to share, feel free... though I might try to justify them, dramaturgically.

For instance, what you've described above -- the drawing of conclusions and then asking about their implications -- is something Valentine does because he's a mathematician explaining math to non-mathematician, which I see not as Stoppard getting the audience somewhere they need to be, but Valentine getting the other characters somewhere they need to be. And sure, others may explain here and there about Byron and landscaping and thermodynamics because it's useful for audience members who no longer have that information at their braintips and a fuller knowledge ensures strenghtening of the play's themes... but the story's dramatic thrust doesn't hinge on it.

Also, ARACADIA encompasses intimate knowledge of a comparatively wide breadth of subjects compared to most evenings at the theater. Had Stoppard assumed everyone who might see the play could adequately describe Fermat's Last Theory and Capability Brown on their own, I don't think it ever would have been produced.

I don't know. Maybe I'm being a fanboy. I am biased in that I do and always have loved the play. But I'll also say, having re-read this thread, that I'm beginning to fear that this production -- which was rather high on my spring list -- may not do justice to the text. Sadface.


*also, Ourtime992, lol, also

[wonkit]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:29pm

Trust me - this production will not disappoint, especially since you already have such a nice appreciation for the structure of the play.

But I, too, think it is beautifully constructed so I was prepared to enjoy what I saw.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/16/11 at 5:43pm

Well, wonkit, I've taken it off my short list for April, but I hope to be back up in June. I'd really hate to miss it.

[AC126748]

Posted: 3/17/11 at 10:04am

*spoilers*

I saw yesterday's matinee. For those wondering, I was able to get student rush at 11:45 for the 2PM show. Row H, side orchestra. Full view.

I'm a huge Stoppard fan, and I find Arcadia to be his most accessible play. Really, everything is all laid out, and it doesn't take a genius to follow the trajectory of the story. This production, however, felt like Arcadia for Dummies; you could see everything coming from a mile away. Leveaux staged the play with no drama, no excitement, no immediacy...it was all about getting from Point A to Point B.

From my seat in Row H of the orchestra, I had no trouble HEARING anybody. However, some of the actors--especially Tom Riley, who plays Septimus Hodge--were unintelligible. By and large, the period scenes fall flat, with miscast actors who have no feeling for Stoppard's language. I cannot tell if this is due to Leveaux's misdirection or just ineptitude on the actors' parts, but the period scenes are f*cking endless.

Bel Powley, as Thomasina, gives the single worst performance I've ever seen on a Broadway stage. I literally wanted to wring her neck from the moment she opened her mouth. Why couldn't her character die after the first scene, instead of at the end? Seriously, with the magnitude of talented young actresses we have over here, was it necessary to import such a strident, charmless girl for this part? Dreadful.

The modern scenes come off much better. Crudup, Williams, Gummer and Esparza all have a great rapport with each other, and play wonderfully together. Crudup really sells the bumbling academic; as someone who works in academia, I could see more than a few of my colleagues in his performance. Esparza is far too old for Valentine--it's just unavoidable--but he's quite good in the role. Grace Gummer is so much more talented than her older sister, who's been foisted on us for the past decade; where has she been hiding? Williams is simply brilliant. I definitely didn't pick up the lesbian subtext that some of you have been suggesting.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 3/17/11 at 9:01pm

I still wanna go back to a point in the first post--HOW is this staging somehow Brechtian--and more so than the past major stagings??

"Let's do the Brechtian production, with no set, and no scenery, and let's let the actors make the play happen for the first time."

Where and how does this relate to this production??
Updated On: 3/17/11 at 09:01 PM

[Taryn]

Posted: 3/18/11 at 1:58am

Except that there is set and scenery.

[aseatontheaisle]

Posted: 3/18/11 at 8:29am

This is, for the most part, a fine production of a truly great play. The play’s direction is superb, the sets and costumes are first-rate, and several of the performances are truly outstanding. Both Tom Riley as Septimus Hodge and Billy Crudup as Bernard Nightingale, in particular, deserve to be singled out for their remarkable performances. But good as the production is, it is not perfect. For one thing, the first act gets underway too slowly and really should be shortened and tightened up. My second and only other real misgiving about this production relates to the casting of Bel Powley as Thomasina Coverly. Her voice is much too shrill and off-putting, she tends to swallow her lines, and she does not really capture her character’s aristocratic nature.

I have posted a greatly expanded version of this review together with reviews of several other plays on my blog www.aseatontheaisle.blogspot.com.
A Seat on the Aisle