The tirelessly adventurous David Greenspan, as significant a member of the New York City theater community as anyone who might be named, is once again confirming and deepening his status.
He’s playing A Shropshire Lad poet AEH (Alfred Edward Housman) in a Theaterlab revival of The Invention of Love, Tom Stoppard’s literary fandango. He’s doing so to a fare-thee-well, actually to a fare-thee-much-much-better. (Is yet another Obie in the offing for the now eight-time Oboe winner?)
Written in 1997 and first seen here in 2001 (with Richard Easton taking home the Tony as Housman), The Invention of Love is marvelously typical Stoppard, chockablock with fancy-fancy intellectual word play involving characters of Oxford and Cambridge (that’s to say “Oxbridge”) affiliations. Well, Housman taught at Cambridge but studied at Oxford, where most of the two-act scenes take place.
The first scene, however, occurs on the bank this side of the River Styx, where Charon (Annabel Capper, the lone female cast member,) is readying to ferry the just-deceased-at-77 Housman to the other side. (The focal furnishing of Bridget Linjdsay’s all-white set is an elegant rowboat occupying the space between the theater’s two longer walls, where two rows each of facing seats are installed.)
Whip smart but not educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, Stoppard’s earlier works—while a verbal gymnast’s nimble output—weren’t necessarily probingly emotional. More concentratedly, he still counted on his limitless sense of humor.
His range greatly widened with the superlative Arcadia and continued right up to his astonishing final play, Leopoldstadt. Titling an outing The Invention of Love inarguably promises emotion, of course, and Stoppard sees to it that emotion is billowingly provided.
Though when he gets around to something resembling a definition of love, what he posits may not be the most immediately gratifying. Twice (spoiler alert), he states this notion: “Love, said Sophocles, is like the ice held in the hand, by children. A piece of ice held fast in the fist.”
Not warming, is it? Nor is a passage like this display of critical thinking: “Textual criticism is the crown and summit of scholarship. Most people, though not enough, find it dry and dull, but it is the only reason for existence for a Latin professor.” Which AEH is.
But therein lies Stoppard’s rib-tickling amusement as well as what he offers as by way of AEH reconsidering his emotional past, by way of his reviewing life and the love he found—or found lacking due to unrequited love.
Much of the backward gaze he affords himself is done by more than once encountering Housman (Yoran Lotan), his younger self. One outstanding scene has them differing, one generation with the other, and espousing:
AEH: You do write poetry.
Housman: Well, I’ve written poems, as one does, you know…
AEH: One does.
Housman: …for the poetry prize at school, quite speakable, I think.
AEH: Good for you, mine were quite unspeakable.
At another ebullient moment AEH dismisses the newly minted 1890s word “homosexual” by pointing out: “It’s half Greek and half Latin!”
Carrying an encyclopedic brain around under his mop top, Stoppard wields a broad range of references. It’s not crucially necessary for patrons to be extremely aware of, say, Horace or the now lesser-known earlier love poet Propertius or the critical writings of Walter Pater (Abrar Paque) or the more familiar Oscar Wilde, who does show up (Sam Bolen). Of course, it couldn’t hurt.
The truly crucial point is that this early in the 2026-27 season, a production setting a high bar has already arrived. Zachary Elkind’s direction is immaculate. He’s collected a first-rate supporting cast, every one of whom—including identified Daniel Liu, José Espinosa, Spencer Lutvak, Leland Fowler—proves himself repeatedly as the sometimes leisurely, sometimes staccato action unfurls.
And remember all that high-class folderol mostly pops on the Oxford campus, students likely prepared at Eton, Harrow and Winchester. To wit (surely to a surfeit of wit), the completely convincing Oxford accents might be attributed in large part to dialect coach/assistant director Laura Bashford.
But David Greenspan in a three-piece suit (Alyssa Korol, the costume designer)—as he was in his one-man presentation of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude—dominates. On the outside AEH is the scholar, seriously dispensing his philosophy and ideology but also unceasingly letting his internal anguish radiate. Is this Greenspan’s crowning portrayal? With the resumé he’s accumulated, it‘s impossible to say.
Note that this is a strictly limited engagement available each performance to not many more than 60 ticket buyers. Note also that one of the characters is Jerome K. Jerome, the author of Three Men in a Boat, a dramatization of which can be seen on YouTube. Dramatized by? Who else? Tom Stoppard.
The Invention of Love opened September 20, 2026, at the Theaterlab and runs through October 3. Tickets and information: themaptheater.com
