Rating: 
Summary: impenetrable showmanship
Review: After witnessing the emotional honesty of The Right Thing, I was certain that Mr. Stoppard was going to produce a stirring and evocative examination about unrequited love. Alas, all we get is dense language, hyperactive research, and intellectual self-admiration. To be avoided at all costs unless as a prescription for insomnia.
Rating: 
Summary: The best Stoppard yet
Review: As in many of his recent plays, Stoppard plays with and juxtaposes two eras, but this one has more humanity and depth of character than even Arcadia. This is only the second Stoppard play during which I have found myself, at various times, smiling broadly, laughing, and weeping. It contains several little bon mots that epitomize not only the action, but larger issues. For example, at one point a character askes another if he wants to do something. The other replies "I don't mind." The first ripostes "But you should: life is in the minding." (approximate quote)Some reviewers have been put off by the fact there are brief lines in classical Greek and in Latin. These are always explained, or their content is not relevant to the plot, but they do add to the sense of deep scholarship and love of learning that pervade this play. Anyone who cares about learning, individual freedom, and the lifelong development of character will appreciate this play. And it will keep you thinking what it would be like to apply the central device of the play to your own life: what person more than a couple decades old would not like to go back and anonymously meet his younger self?! What would you say?
Rating:
Summary: The best Stoppard yet
Review: As in many of his recent plays, Stoppard plays with and juxtaposes two eras, but this one has more humanity and depth of character than even Arcadia. This is only the second Stoppard play during which I have found myself, at various times, smiling broadly, laughing, and weeping. It contains several little bon mots that epitomize not only the action, but larger issues. For example, at one point a character askes another if he wants to do something. The other replies "I don't mind." The first ripostes "But you should: life is in the minding." (approximate quote)Some reviewers have been put off by the fact there are brief lines in classical Greek and in Latin. These are always explained, or their content is not relevant to the plot, but they do add to the sense of deep scholarship and love of learning that pervade this play. Anyone who cares about learning, individual freedom, and the lifelong development of character will appreciate this play. And it will keep you thinking what it would be like to apply the central device of the play to your own life: what person more than a couple decades old would not like to go back and anonymously meet his younger self?! What would you say?
Rating:
Summary: A *must* before seeing the play
Review: I bought it to get ready to attend the SF showing, which I had to miss, so the best experience still awaits me. It was well-reviewed, and I must see it eventually, now that I have read it. I found this play complex and absorbing, with a richness that requires multiple readings and research to understand all the references and to make sense of the characters' interactions and all the flashbacks. There is a lot of Latin in the play, and understanding it helps - that is one reason I appreciated having the text to reread and pour over. The dialogue with Housman and Jackson, and with his younger self, is wonderful. The humor is just so well done - it skims along on top of the pain underneath it. This is a risky play, and a fine one. However, for readers or people looking for something lighter, this is *not* as good a pure read as Arcadia; it is more meaty and introspective. I think it is an experience than no Stoppard fan would want to miss.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Luminous, Stoppard at his Best
Review: I confess to be slightly perplexed by this play. Let me say up front that to my mind it is not quite as good as the masterpiece of "Arcadia", nor quite up to the level of "Indian Ink". I saw it (with high expectations) at the National Theatre in London both the directing and acting were quite excellent, and the play itself was unmistakable Stoppard: profound, clever, painful and funny. Uncharacteristically, though, it occasionally felt a bit disjointed and sometimes even contrived, and yet... by the end I had a distinct feeling of the author feeling somehow smug about it all. So I went to see it again -- and the impression grew stronger. So I bought the script and read it several times -- and this lead me to wonder... There are a number of phrases and situations which are repeated and echoed throughout the play. There is (almost) a kind of formal symmetry here, certain points of the first act being echoed in the second, but it is by no means a simple symmetry. Eventually a thought occurred: is it possible that Stoppard did something *really* clever this time and wrote a play in which certain formal elements follow the formal structure of a Latin poem (or of a whole class of Latin love poetry)? I simply don't know enough to judge, but I wonder... And I certainly wouldn't put it past Sir Tom! :-)
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful play about art and homosexual love
Review: I like this play because it blends the aesthetic with the dramatic. It's aesthetic because it discusses the great works of literature with the great writers and critics of that time. It's dramatic because this discussion provides an interesting background to an issue that makes difficult the lives of the main characters A.E. Houseman and Oscar Wilde: homosexual love. For Houseman the problem is unrequited love. For Oscar Wilde it is a charge of sodomy. The point of classical scholarship is to study Greek and Latin works-that is the vocation of the scholars in this play. According to Oscar Wilde, to be an "aesthete" means to believe that all beauty emanates from Greek writing and sculpture particularly sculpture of the nude male form. In the play A.E. Houseman and his scholarly contemporaries-Ruskin and Pater--point out that much Latin and Greek poetry was written by one man who was in love with another. What makes the play ironic is how this aspect of these ancient cultures flies in the face of contemporary Victorian mores. To wit: the characters in the play are homosexual and that was a crime in 19th century England. Every work of art must have a point or it's pointless. The point in this play is how the definition of love has come full circle since ancient Greece: what was once socially acceptable, boy love (i.e. pedophilia), is now anathema. And what is at best today grudgingly tolerated, homosexual love, was common practice in ancient Greece at least among the dramatists, poets, and philosophers. Stoppard writes: "Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented." Hence the title: "Invention of Love". When Houseman died he had been successful in his career but not in his desire for eros: He says "the grave's a fine and private place but none I think there do embrace".
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful play about art and homosexual love
Review: I like this play because it blends the aesthetic with the dramatic. It's aesthetic because it discusses the great works of literature with the great writers and critics of that time. It's dramatic because this discussion provides an interesting background to an issue that makes difficult the lives of the main characters A.E. Houseman and Oscar Wilde: homosexual love. For Houseman the problem is unrequited love. For Oscar Wilde it is a charge of sodomy. The point of classical scholarship is to study Greek and Latin works-that is the vocation of the scholars in this play. According to Oscar Wilde, to be an "aesthete" means to believe that all beauty emanates from Greek writing and sculpture particularly sculpture of the nude male form. In the play A.E. Houseman and his scholarly contemporaries-Ruskin and Pater--point out that much Latin and Greek poetry was written by one man who was in love with another. What makes the play ironic is how this aspect of these ancient cultures flies in the face of contemporary Victorian mores. To wit: the characters in the play are homosexual and that was a crime in 19th century England. Every work of art must have a point or it's pointless. The point in this play is how the definition of love has come full circle since ancient Greece: what was once socially acceptable, boy love (i.e. pedophilia), is now anathema. And what is at best today grudgingly tolerated, homosexual love, was common practice in ancient Greece at least among the dramatists, poets, and philosophers. Stoppard writes: "Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented." Hence the title: "Invention of Love". When Houseman died he had been successful in his career but not in his desire for eros: He says "the grave's a fine and private place but none I think there do embrace".
Rating: 
Summary: not the Stoppard to begin with, but.....
Review: If you've already read 3 or 4 Stoppard plays (& liked them), this may be a good play to read next. When I saw the (stunning) Broadway production, I realized why I hadn't liked the play too well myself (& I really like Stoppard): it's too long. TS needed a strong-willed editor who could have read the manuscript and said, "Tom, we have to cut about 20 minutes from this work to give it greater cohesion and a bit more rhythm--it'll make it a better play." But on one said that, and sometimes you do wish the play moved along a bit more.
In favor of the play, it provides an essential continuation of the debate developed in Travesties and Arcadia: the debate about the artist's role in society, the emotive dilemma of the very good artist who's overshadowed by the great, and the deluge of history that engulfs, erases, and distorts all alike. In some ways, if you want a more refined understanding of Travesties, you need to read Invention to better understand the Wilde/Joyce(/Byron) figure whose carreer obsesses Stoppard.
Rating:
Summary: The Invention of Love Poetry
Review: It opened in 1997, and the wind it brought to Los Angeles said, "Mr. Housman was queer." Well, no, the play says no such thing, these are not the memoirs of an old queen, although none other than Oscar Wilde is brought on toward the end as a figment of Housman's imagination to retail such goods in a shocking representation that puts me ahead of myself in this piece. The actual subject of the play is the invention of love poetry by Propertius (or some other Roman poet) twenty centuries ago. This proceeds as a philological examination backwards, naturally, against an imaginary representation of Housman's life in his mind. The entire point is to create a simulacrum of emotions reflecting the condition of Propertius, by generating an elaborate masterpiece of artificial construction toying rather dangerously with the real. It's all a game, but it grows more and more unstoppered until you have the real sense that Stoppard has let the play loose entirely: shame and confusion reign as Wilde is mocked (this is prepared with dazzling and daring care by introducing Bunthorne from Patience with the famous satire), until, in the best piece of writing Stoppard has produced, Housman unweaves the mess in the end. The famous opening of Jumpers, involving a lady on a swing and a waiter with a tray, either has nothing on this, or amounts to what it all adds up to. The Grove Press edition, which features on its back cover the pointed assertion that I am wrong and the wind had it right all along, rather humorously contains small alternate insertions (in parentheses) from the Royal National Theatre production, which give the text the incidental look of a variorum.
Rating:
Summary: The Invention of Love Poetry
Review: It opened in 1997, and the wind it brought to Los Angeles said, "Mr. Housman was queer." Well, no, the play says no such thing, these are not the memoirs of an old queen, although none other than Oscar Wilde is brought on toward the end as a figment of Housman's imagination to retail such goods in a shocking representation that puts me ahead of myself in this piece. The actual subject of the play is the invention of love poetry by Propertius (or some other Roman poet) twenty centuries ago. This proceeds as a philological examination backwards, naturally, against an imaginary representation of Housman's life in his mind. The entire point is to create a simulacrum of emotions reflecting the condition of Propertius, by generating an elaborate masterpiece of artificial construction toying rather dangerously with the real. It's all a game, but it grows more and more unstoppered until you have the real sense that Stoppard has let the play loose entirely: shame and confusion reign as Wilde is mocked (this is prepared with dazzling and daring care by introducing Bunthorne from Patience with the famous satire), until, in the best piece of writing Stoppard has produced, Housman unweaves the mess in the end. The famous opening of Jumpers, involving a lady on a swing and a waiter with a tray, either has nothing on this, or amounts to what it all adds up to. The Grove Press edition, which features on its back cover the pointed assertion that I am wrong and the wind had it right all along, rather humorously contains small alternate insertions (in parentheses) from the Royal National Theatre production, which give the text the incidental look of a variorum.
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