SOURCE: "Blowing Hot and Cold," in The New Yorker, Vol. LXXI, No. 8, April 17, 1995, pp. 111-13.

[Lahr is an award-winning American critic, nonfiction writer, playwright, novelist, biographer, and editor. In the review below, he discusses the interplay between chaos and order as well as the past and present in Arcadia.]

In Tom Stoppard's 1966 novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, Malquist remarks, "Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos." This notion has made Stoppard a very rich man. He says that his favorite line in modern English drama is from Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist: "I'm a man of no convictions—at least, I think I am." Over the years, in twenty-one plays, Stoppard has turned his spectacular neutrality into a high-wire act of doubt. "I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself," he once explained. The three-ring circus...