I am an enormous admirer of Tom Stoppard, but I have to admit that Jumpers is my least favorite of his plays. Its main characters are George Moore, a philosopher trying to finish a lecture on the existence of God and the nature of good, and his wife Dorothy, a former musical-comedy star obsessed with astronauts on the moon. It is a whodunit, though we never find out the murderer. It is a farce, though there are long stretches of tedium. There is a troupe of ten yellow-clad philosopher-acrobats, though they are insufficiently used. There is a live upstage combo of musicians, with little to do. The elements in the play are not integrated; they are just placed side by side.
Echoes of Joe Orton's Loot and What the Butler Saw are evident. Some of the puns and references are undeniably funny, but others are just ostentatiously obscure. While Dotty (who is indeed rather dotty) dallies with her husband's boss, Archie, Moore himself displays more fondness for his pets -- a goldfish, hare, and tortoise -- all of which come to sad ends (in ways I will not reveal). The always formidable Simon Russell Beale, wearing an old sweater, plays Moore as well as it can be done, though his first speech drags on for 15 or 20 minutes. Essie Davis is delectable as the fading singer Dotty, and Jonathan Hyde is properly slimy as Archie.
Designer Vicki Mortimer has solved the problems of jumping from one thing to another by employing a turntable, allowing director David Leveaux to keep the show flowing.
