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What Love Has to Do With It
by Robert Feldberg
The Record
February 11, 2001
THE INVENTION OF LOVE: A play, by Tom Stoppard. Previews begin March 1; opens March 29. At the Lyceum Theater, 149 W. 45th St. (212) 239-6200.
A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was a classical scholar and a poet, best known for his collection "A Shropshire Lad."
Living a life free of outward incidents, this exceedingly private man would seem a dubious choice for a dramatic biography. But that didn't stop Tom Stoppard -- who has previously found theatrical life in landscape gardening ("Arcadia"), moral philosophy ("Jumpers"), and minor Shakespearean characters ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead") -- from making him the central figure in "The Invention of Love."
Robert Sean Leonard plays Housman from ages 15 to 26 (Richard Easton portrays him at 77). He admitted that a first reading of the play did not give him faith in its broad appeal.
"I thought, `Oy yoy yoy -- textual criticism, Oxford, aesthetes; this is not going to be big with [tourists],'" Leonard said. "But then I found an underlying feeling, an underlying passion. It's an odd, beautiful play about love."
Specifically, it's about the suppressed, lifelong passion that Housman felt for another man.
But as with all of Stoppard's plays, the central notion is also a jumping-off point, a way to explore other, more wide-ranging ideas, in this case about the nature and varieties of love. It's all done with the playwright's usual wit and whimsy. (Upon meeting his younger self, the old Housman says, "I'm not as young as I was. Whereas you, of course, are.")
"He rigidly criticized classical texts and he wrote beautiful poetry about the man he loved," said Leonard of Housman. "Is there really a difference in feeling? There can be passion and romance in the focus of a mathematician," added the actor, who, in fact, played a young man passionate about mathematics in "Arcadia."
"The Invention of Love" debuted in London in 1997, and was performed in San Francisco a year ago.
Stoppard is so popular in New York that it's unusual, although not unprecedented, for a play of his to take this long to get to Broadway. The reason is that "The Invention of Love" likely is not considered the same kind of sure-fire audience pleaser as "Arcadia" or "The Real Thing."
"It's not that easy to do," said Leonard. "There's a lot of masking of what the character's really feeling. You need to have the right ensemble."
He said it's critically important that there be rapport between the actors playing the younger and older Housman, and that he felt confident he and Easton, who've performed together before, could achieve that. The play's director is Jack O'Brien, who's already had a hit this season with a show that couldn't be more different, the raucous musical "The Full Monty."
"`The Invention of Love' can really be great theater," said Leonard. "I think we can pull it off."
