Arena Stage's The Age of Innocence: A Masterful Production
Photo by Daniel Rader
Karen Zacarías’s stage adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence is a three-hour and 15-minute slow burn that leaves the audience wanting more. Now playing at Arena Stage, this classic novel preserves much of the original text so that the audience gets the whole experience of Wharton's tongue-in-cheek social commentary and trademark humor. Director Hana S. Sharif's production captures the opulence and suffocation of Gilded Age New York while telling the timeless tale of two star-crossed lovers.
From the moment Countess Ellen Olenska (played by Shereen Ahmed) appears, it is clear that she is unlike anyone else in Newland Archer’s (played by A.J. Shively) world. Ellen, separated from her husband, defies the stifling conformity of New York’s social elite in the 1870s. Ahmed brings such a bead of life to her character that it is easy to understand why Newland is drawn to her. He would profess his love for her if only she wasn’t legally married and if only he wasn’t newly engaged to May Welland (played by Delphi Borich).
As the chemistry between Ellen and Newland Archer builds throughout this three-hour show, the audience is rooting for Ellen and hanging onto every detail of her interactions with Newland, such as a hand resting on an arm or, in one particularly memorable tableau from early on in the play, Ellen's fan resting on Newland's thigh.
Photo by Daniel Rader
Key moments like this in the play are frozen in time by Xavier Pierce's lighting design as well as by Charles Coes and Nathan A Roberts' original music and sound design. During intimate moments between Ellen and Newland, the lights dim or turn red, and the music slowly builds with an incessant tick that makes you grip your seat. In these up-close moments and transitions, the artistic team at Arena Stage has created a theater experience that almost feels like you are watching a movie.
The Age of Innocence, playing on Arena Stage's Fichandler Stage, is a theater in the round, and Tim Mackabee's set design makes full use of it. There are opera boxes positioned in each of the four corners of the stage—not for audience members, but for actors. In the opening scene, the main characters emerge on these opera boxes, having arrived to watch a show of their own.
Right from the start, the audience is aligned with the main characters (the conservative social elite of Gilded Age New York), urging the audience to reflect upon how Wharton’s social critique is still relevant today. The opera boxes reinforce the play’s central societal surveillance and judgment themes. Several key and intimate scenes, which happen center stage, are witnessed by characters in the opera boxes, with one character even leering through his opera glasses. The characters, perched up high, embody the unrelenting gaze of high society as it polices the desires and choices of its members.
Today, societal surveillance has taken on new online forms. In this age of social media, where strangers and friends alike can be judged, criticized, and condemned en masse, Wharton's story remains as relevant as ever.
Photo by Daniel Rader
If you’re a fan of stories of forbidden desire and societal constraints, this masterful adaptation proves that three hours can feel remarkably brief when spent in 1870s New York—run time: Three hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission.
The Age of Innocence plays through March 30, 2025, at Arena Stage (1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC). To purchase tickets, call the box office at (202) 488-3300 or purchase them online.
Jim Diamondidis is a recent graduate of Harvard College. He works in musical theater and paints.