I feel stupid. (or ego sentio bardus)
Written: Aug 17 '01 (Updated Mar 30 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: An intellectual tour de force on love and philosophy. Awe-inspiring set design.
Cons: Incredibly hard to understand. Requires extensive knowledge of the classics to fully appreciate.
The Bottom Line: An intellectual tour-de-force on the beauty of knowledge and the power of love. Incredibly hard to understand, but well worth the effort. Awe-inspiring set design.
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| benho's Full Review: The Invention of Love |
I wrote this a few months in the book section, before epinions finally thoughtfully added this category about a week after the show closed on Broadway. I am now moving it to its rightful place. Hopefully, it will help those who might get to see it when and if it opens near them. Of course, as NBC says, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you! TM Enjoy!
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The Invention of Love on Broadway *. Tom Stoppard's tour-de-force play on the beauty of knowledge and the power of love lured me in based on last Sunday's Tony Awards where it won two, and impressing with nominations in a handful of others. The play tells the at-times tragic, at-times triumphant life of 19th century Victorian poet and Latin scholar A.E. Housman. This comedic play is also an intellectual exercise in erudition by Tom Stoppard, an unbridled eclat of philosophical discourse, a paean to the virtues of classical reason, and a love story as only a scholarly pedant can tell it. And frankly, it made me feel stupid. But stupid in a good way.
Warning, I get rather long-winded here. Just wanted to give you a head's up, if you haven't already guessed)
Tom Stoppard's original claim to fame came from his 1966 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a postmodern romp through surreality that fleshes out the apparently silly existence of these two faceless characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. That play made me feel stupid as well when I read it, but as I was only in the 8th grade, I was hoping I would do better this time, especially after doing particularly well with Stoppard's recent silver-screen hit, Shakespeare in Love which didn't make me feel stupid at all.
Oh how wrong I was.
Watching this play was akin to how I felt watching a Moliere play with only adequate French training, or a lecture on quantum physics with only rudimentary knowledge of mechanics. Enough was familiar to catch glimpses of the genius being conveyed but the rest was a blur. I was hanging on for dear life. I felt awash in a sea of ideas, grasping at the odd comprehensible phrase to stay desperately afloat, but also basking in the glory of the beauteous sea I was drowning in.
In some sense, Invention of Love is the diametric counterpart of this year's Tony winner, Proof. Proof was very easy to watch and follow; it quickly pulled the viewer into its story, and its characters and ideas were very accessible. However, the themes in the end were very pastoral, dealing with the bonds of family and the bonds of trust: simple themes. Invention of Love, rather, is an obtuse discourse that requires immense effort and immense concentration but rewards in the end, leaving you ruminating over the importance of the grand ideas that philosophy has provided.
Full appreciation of the play requires a knowledge of the likes of Horace and Catullus, an appreciation of Latin puns and scholarship, an awareness of the 19th century German Aesthetics, familiarity with the writings of Oscar Wilde, and much more. I had none of this. Fortunately, the playbill provides a reasonable primer. And further, using a simple laugh metric, (how many people laughed at the various jokes) it was clear that much of the audience was in a similar boat, and we could all feel stupid together.
But the light of the play was so bright; it still shined through to such dim wits like me. Stoppard uses this forum to declare the value of all knowledge, because this pursuit of knowledge, especially useless knowledge, is where we are most human, like the purpose of God, without the God. *
The play is a biopic into the life and times of poet and scholar, A.E. Housman. Housman was a 19th century scholar, perhaps the best Latin scholar of his times, who devoted his life to finding the true meaning of ancient texts. Latin texts from Roman times were invariably mangled by centuries of copyists, and Housman devoted his life to the science of recreating the original. However, Housman is most remembered for a collection of poems he wrote in a burst one year early in his life, entitled A Shropshire Lad, poems perhaps inspired by his deep-rooted all-encompassing unrequited love for a Oxford colleague and best chum, Moses Jackson.
It is this duality of Housman, poet vs. scholar, that establishes the themes of the play: love story vs. philosophical discourse, classicism vs. romanticism, science vs. art, academia vs. the rest of the world.
Plot
Invention of Love begins with Housman, facing Charon on the river Styx, having lived a long and productive life. This post-mortem Housman, whom Stopard calls AEH, is played by veteran Broadway star Richard Easton. AEH is a renowned and established scholar, still excited by scholarly pursuits, and ever curious as death allows him to reexamine his life, a life starring his younger self, the young A.E. Housman, played by youthful Robert Sean Leonard (star of Dead Poets Society).
The first act has AEH flitting through the younger Housman's life as an undergraduate at Oxford. Housman was an exceptionally bright scholarship student with high prospects, until he is stricken with love for science student, Moses Jackson. Torn and conflicted, Housman fails to graduate.
The second act follows Housman working as a copyright clerk, as he navigates Victorian London, encounters such luminaries as his former classmate Oscar Wilde, confronts Moses Jackson with his love, and works his way back into academia.
Themes...
The story, however, is just a framework. The concept of homosexual love is explored using Greek myth and Roman philosophy. The study of classics that is so out of fashion today, but to which all of these men devoted their life is brought alive, making me reconsider my own course of study. Housman is much more equipped to handle or at least understand the emotions that rule his life, than the scientifically inclined Moses Jackson.
In the same way Housman the classicist is being dominated by Jackson, the scientist, classic scholarship is becoming less and less relevant as Ingres is being supplanted by Delacroix. In the same way, the art of Oscar Wilde begins to supplant the erudition of A.E. Housman.
Finally, as much as the play is a study of Housman, and a study of thought, it is also a study of the times. Whether exploring the world of the academics in Oxford, or the politics of Victorian London life. Homosexuality and the media, Gilbert and Sullivan and Oscar Wilde, all in all, Invention of Love spanned the limits of what it means to be A.E. Housman, a classical scholar, a tormented lover, a Victorian gentleman.
A few words on the New York production.
This review has thus far focused on Stoppard's, the writer's, play, rather than Bishop and Gersten's, the directors', play, partly because this is in the book review section, and mostly because I was so busy comprehending Tom Stoppard's words that appreciating the acting/direction was secondary. However, the acting was top notch, earning the production two Tony's. All the performers in this exceptionally large cast of white men (and one white woman) did an excellent job, except perhaps David Harbour who played Moses Jackson, whom I felt made the scientifically but not classically trained Jackson too much of a buffoon in the midst of the rest of the cast, who all played classical scholars. However, that was perhaps less poor acting, and more a disagreement in interpretation.
The scenic design and the art direction, however, were spectacular. This part of the production, I will most remember. Watching the play was a magical and surreal experience. This was partly from the ethereal, yet light-hearted music, but particularly the magical set. Like the Beatles film Yellow Submarine, or the animated collages of Monty Python, the setting was established through iconic metonymy and synecdoche that popped out of a sparse Hades netherworld.
The canvas on which the set was painted was a reflective jet-black floor that evoked water, with a textural backdrop that when alternatively lit could either be an eerie moonscape of Hades, or a luminescent star field. On this surreal landscape, set pieces would appear and disappear. Huge towers of gigantic books evoked a library. The giants of Victorian London high society were highlighted as they loomed over a miniature House of Parliament that doubled as a divan. A simple line created caves. Charon's barque drifted magically across the "waters," aided by two skillful on-stage stagehands.
All this was designed by Bob Crowley, a genius who has designed for plays ranging from the Iceman Cometh and Disney's Aida.
What I liked
I must admit, my Latin is limited to Cogito Ergo Sum, E Pluribus Unum, Veni, Vedi, Vici and other such frivolities. However, despite what I imply at the beginning, the play is not all indecipherable erudition. Some of its truly comic moments come from such witty and accessible phrases as: "My life was not short enough to not do all the things I did not want to not do," or when informed of the latest term to enter the English lexicon, homosexuality, the wizened AEH reacts: "I am aghast, Latin and Greek roots in a single word!" * And references to "buggery" by stodgy old Englishmen always crack me up.
Just like Shakespeare, The Invention of Love can be well understood only with careful scanning of the text. While on the subject of the Bard, I should say that this play makes Shakespeare look like Adam Sandler (Scary thought). However, all is not lost.
A big help is to get there early. The articles in the playbill are extremely helpful in setting the stage and providing background. Also, spend the ridiculously under-priced $1 for the supplemental program which includes a beautiful further analysis of the play, and a nice collection of poems that the play references, printed in the Victorian style. These will give you much to chew on, and illuminate much. If you are willing to put in the effort, The Invention of Love is a truly magical and rewarding experience.
The Facts:
At the Lyceum Theatre
Address: 149 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10036
CLOSED
Unfortunately this show is closed. Hopefully, it will reopen in a theatre near you.
Running Time: 2 hours and 25 minutes, including one intermission.
Playing Schedule: Tues - Sat Evenings at 8pm, Wed and Sat Matinees at 2pm, and Sunday at 3pm
Prices range from $30 - $60
Fairly easy to get tickets at TKTS given the nature of the show.
Notes:
o This review should have been in Theatre, but I got tired of waiting for epinions to fix that section which is terribly out of date. So it's here instead.
o (*) I just wanted to note that the quotes are extracted from the dim recesses of my memory and should not be trusted to be perfectly accurate.
o Check out http://www.tonys.org/nominees/excerpts/invention_excerpt.html for an excerpt of the play's dialogue to see what I mean.
o For a review of the play Proof (and a review I am particularly proud of), see http://www.epinions.com/content_20844809860
o The title includes my rather pathetic attempt at Latin using online Latin dictionaries. If someone knows how to say "I feel stupid" in Latin, please let me know.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
benho
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Member: Ben Ho
Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 52 members
About Me:
The end (of grad school) is near... off now to teach in cold Ithaca.
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