(Sylviane Gold’s article appeared in The New York Times, Oct. 17; via Pam Green.)
Tom Stoppard is just so much smarter than the rest of us. But don’t let that intimidate you. Yes, his witty, winning masterpiece, “Arcadia,” at Yale Repertory Theater, brims with difficult questions in physics, biology and higher mathematics. But this miraculous play is also loaded with good jokes, about sex and poetry, sex and pedantry, sex and everything. Given enough time, grouse, turtles and rabbits multiply into infinity and dwindle into nonexistence, as we all must. Yet, the playwright reminds us, there’s much good dancing to be had along the way.
Mr. Stoppard’s cosmic tragicomedy spans several generations of the aristocratic Coverly family and a few of the servants and visitors flitting through Sidley Park, their grand Derbyshire estate, not to mention the trees, shrubs, birds and animals that also live there.