Arcadia at Warren Wilson

Tom Stoppard is known for his erudite, word-heavy plays that sometimes seem designed to obfuscate as much as to edify or amuse, although they certainly do that, too. His current Broadway play cycle, The Coast of Utopia is cut across such a wide swath of obscure Russian academia of a hundred years ago, that the program includes helpful suggestions for further (heavy) reading, at least one of which quickly became one of the most coveted and hard to find books in New York, and only partly because so few of them were on the shelves to begin with. Warren Wilson College’s recent production of Stoppard’s Arcadia, directed by Ron Bashford, also included several pages of definitions and explanations of words and phrases in the program, which were helpful, but even without this lexicon, the show was understandable and enjoyable, despite—and of course because of—Mr Stoppard’s strong style.

The play opens with an evocative and surprisingly exciting moment in which a character we will later know as the nearly silent child Gus walks to center stage, sits upon an elaborately upholstered chair, and bites into an apple, savoring every bite. What this has to do with the play itself only starts to become clear much later, but the moment is a brilliant way of arousing the imagination and the senses in anticipation of whatever may follow this unusual and surprising beginning.

What follows, of course, is a romp through poetry, journalism, dahlias, thermodynamics, dueling, love, education, adultery, turtles, dancing, chaos theory, and time. For starters. That all of this is actually interesting and relatively easy to follow is a testament to the skill and hard work of the students and their director.

Mr Bashford has a way of working with actors that both encourages creativity and demands a high level of commitment to the text and to one’s fellow actors, and this approach pays off from the first spoken words. The play starts with a lead actor in conversation with a servant, a minor role, but it is immediately clear that both actors have been asked to put a lot of effort into both the outward aspects of their roles, including consistently good English accents, but also into establishing real connections with each other. Without that human connection shared between all of the cast, the play could easily devolve into a bunch of over privileged academics going on about obscure theories for two hours. Instead, we get a glimpse into the lives of people who sometimes let their academic aspiration get the better of themselves, but who struggle with love and work, who try to exist as strangers, as lovers, and as family, and who care deeply about themselves, their fellows, and their sometimes eccentric pastimes.

Stoppard’s plot, a story set in both 1809 and the present, can take a long time to unfold, but it is fascinating stuff, and these young performers are able to make it consistently interesting, funny, and even exciting, in a subtle sort of way. Come to this play prepared to listen. But don’t think too much—just listen to the words, and trust that the actors have quite a good idea how to get where they are going.

--Willie Repoley