Thursday, April 16, 7:30 pm., Orcas Center
— from Artha Kass —
Acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) returns to the National Theatre with his highly-anticipated new play The Hard Problem, directed by Nicholas Hytner (Othello, Hamlet, One Man, Two Guvnors). Transport yourselves to London‘s National Theatre as a live performance of The Hard Problem streams to Orcas Center on Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 pm.
Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brainscience institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is ‘the hard problem’ which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo, and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.
Playwright Tom Stoppard’s virtues as a dramatist are by now well known. Although he has changed and developed as a writer, some qualities are constant from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) to Rock’n’Roll (2006). In Stoppard’s work there is always an intellectual exhilaration that led Jeremy Treglown to describe him as a “one-man Adult Education Centre”. Stoppard also has the capacity to bring unlikely opposites into flamboyant juxtaposition. Above all, there is a delight in the punning possibilities of language that makes him one of theatre’s most accomplished wordsmiths.
“100 minutes of brilliant brainache.” —Daily Mail
“Stimulating. Absorbing. A rich, ideas-packed work.” —Guardian
“A typically witty return for Tom Stoppard.” —Evening Standard
“Intellectually charged. Pulses with interesting ideas. Elegantly interpreted by Nicholas Hytner.” –-Evening Standard
“Flecked with Stoppard’s wry, ironic humour and luminous intelligence, directed with exemplary lucidity by Hytner, this is a play that, movingly, wrestles with deep questions about what makes us who we are and with the implications of materialism.” —Financial Times
See NY Times and other reviews and interviews at www.orcascenter.org
Tickets for The Hard Problem from NT Live are $18, $13 for students, $2 off for Orcas Center members, and may be purchased at www.orcascenter.org or by calling 376-2281 ext. 1 or visiting the Orcas Center Box Office open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from noon – 2 pm. For more information about Orcas Center 2015 season visit www.orcascenter.org.
Yet again, an extravagantly lively and well-written description of an Orcas Center event by Artha Kass, a treasure for whom no superlative will suffice.