BroadwayGirlNYC: At This Theatre

This week, I had the true pleasure of seeing Tom Stoppard's masterpiece, Arcadia, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.  It's a piece I've loved for a long time, having read it in both high school and college; I was delighted when the announcement was made that the show was coming to Broadway. 

It's a story of two families - one in the early 1800s and one in modern times. Both families inhabit the same England country estate, over a century apart in time; over the course of the play, connections beyond their address are revealed as the characters move about a simply decorated, yet unquestionably grand, main room. In Act I, the scenes alternate between generations.  Then in Act II, the characters in both time periods begin to move amongst each other - not interacting, but intertwining.  The year of action becomes incidental; Stoppard's message seems to be that time doesn't matter, and that all periods may exist at once on some grand universal plain.

Sitting in the balcony at the performance gave me a view of the full stage, proscenium, and house of the Barrymore Theatre.  As the idea of time was deconstructed onstage, I began to think back to the other evenings I'd spent in this same place, and the other shows I'd seen here.  My memories were vivid, and suddenly it was if I was watching not just Arcadia, but the other four Broadway shows I had previously seen performed on this stage, all entwined together and coexisting in a gorgeous and epic theatrical dance.

The shows: Stephen Sondheim's Company, in 2006; A trio of David Mamet works (November in 2007, Speed the Plow in 2008, and Race in 2009); and now Stoppard's Arcadia in 2011.  (Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King and a comedy called Elling by Simon Bent both played the theatre during this timeframe as well, though unfortunately I missed their runs.)  So now the grand estate of Arcadia was also a New York City apartment (Company), the Oval Office (November), a film company's headquarters (Plow), and a law firm (Race).  Arcadia's 19^th century philandering tutor brushed shoulders not only with his modern counterpart, but also with Company's pining bachelor, November's absurd President, Plow's driven film executive and Race's conflicted law assistant.

The fact that Raul Esparza has starred in three of the five shows I've seen here was not lost on me.  I found myself wondering if he feels at home here, and how much of his past characters he feels in his current performance.  Here he was, embodying a British gentleman in the exact same spot where I'd seen him as Bobby the perpetual bachelor, and Charlie Fox, the up-and-coming movie executive.  I wondered if he could feel them beside him - because I certainly could.

A gorgeous moving picture choreographed itself in my brain: a dance that required both my physical eyes and the eyes of my imagination and memory.  Some bodies were visible and others were not, but that didn't change how real they were to me.  Actors may have come and gone, but the residual energy of these characters - along with Geoffrey Rush's celebrated King Berenger, Brendan Fraser's short-lived Kjell Bjarn and countless others - still reside here, just as the two eras of Arcadia reality coexist in the same home a century apart.

I began to imagine the first play within these walls: 1927's The Kingdom of God, which starred Ethel Barrymore herself.  In fact, she went on to star in multiple shows here; I'm sure that she felt whispers from the past productions as each new curtain rose.  I felt like I was hearing those whispers too - along with voices from every show that has played this theatre in the decades since. 

Titles such as The Women, Pal Joey, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun, Wait Until Dark, Travesties, American Buffalo, Baby, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Lettuce and Lovage, and The Sisters Rosenweig have all premiered here.  Images from each waver in my mind's eye.  They look beautiful, superimposed upon each other and co-mingling with the two simultaneous tableaus of Arcadia. 

***I must express my supreme appreciation for the 2010 edition of Playbill's "At this Theatre," which not only inspired the title of this week's column, but also provided invaluable information in writing it.  To order your own copy, click here.***