Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Stoppard, Tom (Vol. 91) - Vincent Canby (review date 31 March 1995)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Vincent Canby (review date 31 March 1995)

SOURCE: "Stoppard Comedy Bridges Centuries and States of Mind," in The New York Times, March 31, 1995, pp. B1, B10.

[For many years the chief film critic of The New York Times, Canby is also a novelist, playwright, and theater critic. In the following excerpt, he favorably reviews Arcadia.]

There's no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.

That's the play.

Trevor Nunn's Lincoln Center Theater production, which opened last night in the Beaumont, is a reasonable American facsimile of those he staged in London, first at the Royal...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Vincent Canby (review date 31 March 1995)
   2. John Simon (review date 10 April 1995)
   3. John Lahr (review date 17 April 1995)
   4. Tim Appelo (review date 1 May 1995)
   5. Anne Barton (review date 8 June 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright