“Arcadia” Paints a Bleak, Loveless Future, at Shotgun Players, Berkeley
When we can keep up with them, the characters dazzle with their wit. They recite poetry. They ponder, to nihilistic ends, Newtonian determinism, the new science of thermodynamics, and the mathematics of grouse populations, derived from centuries of records in the game book, a.k.a., Things on the Estate That Have Been Shot. They fuck, they cheat, they plan to duel. (The action stays wholly off stage.)