Critical Condition

A revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia just opened on Broadway.  The play is set in the past and present, and deals with love and math. (There, that was simple.) The new production is getting good reviews, but what intrigues me is how the play itself, first produced in 1993, is being greeted. From The New York Times on down, the critics seem to think it's a modern classic, one of the top theatrical works of the 20th century and Stoppard's masterpiece.

I've read Arcadia, though never seen a production.  I've read most of Stoppard's plays.  I think Arcadia is one of his better pieces, but I wouldn't have expected a consensus that it's his best. (Or are they just being nice because it's being revived now?) It has a delightful mix of wit, wordplay and philosophy, but that's Stoppard's stock-in-trade. Is it that much better than Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (the play that made him), The Real Inspector Hound, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Invention Of Love or The Coast Of Utopia?

When the recent revival of Jaosn Miller's That Championship Season opened, a lot of critics thought the 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning play was hokey and stale.  Let's give Arcadia another twenty years.  If it still holds up, then maybe it is as great as they claim.