Arcadia (play) - Reception

Reception

The Times, reviewing the first production in 1993, praised the "perfect marriage of ideas and high comedy", but for some the ideas overwhelmed the comedy: "...too clever by about two-and-three-quarters. One comes away instructed with more than one can usefully wish to know..." noted The Daily Mail. The play's West End transfer, after an eight-month run at the National, gave an opportunity for re-appraisal and The Daily Telegraph commented: "I have never left a play more convinced that I had just witnessed a masterpiece".

Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the play as "Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion" but many New York reviews were mixed or unfavourable, citing anachronisms and a lack of realism in Stoppard's conception.

The London revival of 2009 prompted more critics to laud the play as "Stoppard's finest work". Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian that " play gets richer with each viewing ... there is poetry and passion behind the mathematics and metaphysics." Johann Hari of The Independent speculated that the work would come to be recognised "as the greatest play of its time".

The 2011 Broadway production, directed by David Leveaux, met with a mixed reception. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called it "a half-terrific revival of Mr. Stoppard's entirely terrific Arcadia", noting that "several central roles are slightly miscast", and "some of the performances from the Anglo-American cast are pitched to the point of incoherence." Similar concerns over the production's casting and performances were also raised by critics from the New York magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Time Out New York and Bloomberg News.