Arcadia, a play by Tom Stoppard at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Directed by David Leveaux. In its final week of previews, this is shaping up as an anemic revival of Stoppard's celebrated play. There is a pulse here, a weak one, but where it is really lacking is in heart. Possibly that's due to the disastrously mis-cast Bel Powley as Thomasina. Projecting a whining flippancy, she neither is convincing as a precocious genius, nor makes us believe that she matures in the two years that pass between Acts One and Two into a young woman on the verge of sexual awakening. One thing Powely needs to do is learn to project her voice without shouting at the top of her lungs.
The rest of the cast is uneven. Tom Riley is superb as Hodge and Raul Esparza is quite good as Valentine. My wife and I split on Crudup, she liked his over the top performance, while I found him one dimensionally irritating. Grace Gummer, the younger daughter of Meryl Streep has a radiant presence and was good in the minor role of Chloe. Too bad she wasn't cast as Thomasina. Margaret Colin is a wan and ineffectual Lady Croom.
In this production, the play seems all hat and no cattle, with lots of pseud0-intellectual and cultural trappings to make an audience feel smarter than they and the play really are.
But perhaps with a good Thomasina and a different director the play might live up to its reputation. The production itself badly needs color and that sense of landscape that seems to be built into the text. As it is, it's a big open room, all white monochrome which is belied by the gorgeous curtain drop providing the riot of landscape and color that is absent.
There are pleasures to be sure -- Stoppard's prose is elegant and brilliant -- but so much of it seems like a magician's bag of tricks, dazzling, but empty. Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test Grade B-