High life | 9 April 2011

New York

I went to see a revival of Arcadia in the beautiful Ethel Barrymore Theatre last Saturday night, and it made my day. Tom Stoppard is our greatest playwright, and I think Arcadia is his best play, although a couple of other gems of his come close. I was with Marine Major Michael Warring and Marine Major Chris Meyers (retd) and their girls. Both officers saw action in Iraq, both are extremely well educated and well read, and both think that Tom Stoppard is the greatest thing since the Marine Corps. There’s nothing like Sir Tom’s intelligent wordplay and mind-boggling knowledge to put one in a great mood, until we exited the theatre, that is.

The warm glow of having witnessed something truly wonderful disappear quicker than you can say Gaddafi. Broadway is no longer the Great White Way, but a Disneyised, bustling suburban shopping mall full of megastores selling junk; a mediagenic, illuminated blur of moving electric surfaces selling more junk, with thousands of junk people gawping, eating junk food and listening to junk music blaring from their earphones.