Cocky Crudup Upends Stoppard’s Fragile ‘Arcadia’: Jeremy Gerard
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When a preternaturally intelligent girl asks her scrumptious tutor to define “carnal embrace,” he replies, unfazed, “the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.”
With that exchange, Tom Stoppard’s time-tripping “Arcadia” begins. It works equally well as a play about sex with a lot of highbrow talk thrown in and as a play about highbrow matters with plenty of sex.