Word: stoppard
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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AUTHOR: TOM STOPPARD...
...nearly a decade since a new Tom Stoppard play has been seen on Broadway, not because he hasn't been working or has lost his arch wit and narrative originality, but because commercial producers fear that his learned , tragicomedies demand too much of audiences intellectually and indulge them too little emotionally. Stoppard's Hapgood mingled a spy story, a love story, games of mistaken identity and reflections on physics, and has never had a major U.S. production. The same fate may well await his new play, although it is by far the best from any British writer in years...
This time Stoppard climaxes a splendid intellectual farrago with a poignant image of two couples dancing, literally and metaphysically, in the dark. One embraces in the dawn of the romantic 19th century, the other at the twilight of the nihilistic 20th. Both are confronting the little tragedy of death and the grand tragedy of entropy, the inevitable darkening and chilling of the universe. This dual moment, and the glittering double story that precedes it, are full of more affection and compassion than Stoppard has ever shown before...
...Stoppard, intrigued by these passive, undifferentiated non-characters, tries to reconstruct the drama of Hamlet from their point of view. He intersperses his own imagined dialogue with the actual text of Shakespeare's play, to create a fascinating new perspective on Hamlet, drama, the human condition and flipping coins...
...contrast, Ivan Briscoe, as the self-important, archetypal actor, the Player, enunciates his lines flawlessly. With this character, Stoppard takes a stab at the thesps of this world, and Briscoe's interpretation is a twist of the knife. He delivers a spirited portrayal of the unshakably dignified Player who doubles as pimp for a group of malnourished and talentless actors-cum-prostitutes...