directed by blanka zizka
NEWS & NOTES
BELIEVE THE HYPE
Stoppard's latest thrusts Philly theater into the spotlight - and the Wilma came prepared
Philadelphia Weekly: February 23, 2000
By J. Cooper Robb
Back in 1996, when the Wilma opened its new theater on the Avenue of the Arts with Tom Stoppard's ARCADIA, it was considered a major event for the Philadelphia theater community. Now, the Wilma takes on Stoppard's latest play, THE INVENTION OF LOVE. And while it may not have the same impact on the city's cultural landscape, it does signal the Wilma's ascendance as a major player on the national scene.
Fully realizing the importance of presenting THE INVENTION OF LOVE's East Coast premiere (Stoppard chose to bypass Broadway in favor of the Wilma), director Blanka Zizka makes the most of a golden opportunity. Stamping her own indelible vision on Stoppard's dazzling look at scholarship, art and love, she blows the dust off the creaky subject of textual criticism in a wild, surrealistic romp through the life of poet/scholar A. E. Housman.
Standing on the banks of the river Styx, Housman - in a state Zizka describes as "somewhere between waking and dreaming" - reflects on his life as a young student at Oxford. Vigorously played by Martin Rayner, the elder Housman meets his younger self (Mark Alhadeff) who, while thrilled with unraveling the mysteries of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, is also hopelessly in love with classmate Moses Jackson (Ian Merrill Peakes).
In one fascinating sequence, the two Housmans sit on a bench debating the origin of the love poem. Practically all the scene's movement is provided by the rhythm of Stoppard's prose, and here, Zizka wisely decides to let the playwright shine.
But INVENTION is anything but a chatty production. With boats flying in air and winged scholars playing croquet with giant colored balls, this dream world is 100 times more vivid than any waking memory. Michael McGarty (set), Russell H. Champa (lighting), Janus Stefanowicz (costumes) and Adam Wernick (composer/sound design) have knocked heads to create an atmosphere that is paradoxically hallucinatory and revelatory.
Occupying this strange terrain is one of the finer ensembles in recent memory. Particularly good among the plethora of admirable performances: Eli Finkelman as Housman's school chum, Pollard; Benjamin Lloyd as the lecherous classical tutor, Pater; and George Tynan Crowley's daring, disturbing portrait of famed aesthete, Oscar Wilde.
Enormously funny, touching and provocative, THE INVENTION OF LOVE is at once a love story and a search for truth. Using Housman's attempts to unscramble the centuries of distortions incurred by the ancient Latin and Greek texts, Stoppard exposes a worldview based on bias and ignorance.
INVENTION is also, perhaps, Stoppard's most theatrical play - filled, at it is, with lies, illusions, and deceptive practices both deliberate and fortuitous. Taking advantage of the Wilma's entire performance space, Zizka utilizes the stage's ability to simultaneously deceive and enlighten. The result is a merging of fact and fiction so tangible that Wilde's assertion, "To do it is nothing, to be said to have done it is everything," becomes, within INVENTION's culture of stern Victorian morality, a disquieting statement of fact.
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