The notices are in for The Invention of Love, the MAP Theater’s rare New York revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1997 play about the Latin scholar and poet A. E. Housman, which opened at Theaterlab on September 20 and runs only to October 3. David Greenspan plays the dead Housman looking back on an Oxford youth and an unrequited love, Yaron Lotan plays the young man he was, and Zachary Elkind directs in a third-floor white box on West 36th Street that seats barely a hundred. Twelve critics have filed, and on Greenspan they do not disagree at all — the disagreement is over Stoppard, whose three hours of textual criticism and Oxbridge wordplay one reviewer calls immaculate in the staging and another finds a hurried recitation.
The verdict: twelve notices so far, and only three of them carry a score — La Voce di New York at five out of five, New York Stage Review at four and The Front Row Center at 3.6 — which is the New York norm rather than a gap in the sweep. The nine that publish no rating are no less clear: every one of them singles out David Greenspan, and the field parts company over whether Zachary Elkind’s production has the room and the pace to carry Stoppard’s density.
What are critics saying about The Invention of Love?
Vulture
“How Much Did I Love The Invention of Love?”
Reviewer: Sara Holdren
If this sounds like heaven to you, let’s get coffee sometime. If it sounds esoteric or otherwise off-putting, well, that’s certainly what the boards of most American theaters seem to think — and so thank goodness for companies like the MAP and directors like Zachary Elkind, who know otherwise. Stoppard himself had a soft spot for The Invention of Love. It was his favorite of his plays, and its not-so-secret secret is that underneath all the Oxbridge bravado, the high-flown logophilia and historical exposition (which it excels at deploying with nimble comic flair), it is perhaps his most deeply romantic.
New York Stage Review
“David Greenspan Illuminates Tom Stoppard”
Reviewer: David Finkle
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.
La Voce di New York
"An intellectual romp into A.E. Housman’s inner life in Victorian Academia"
Reviewer: JK Clarke
"The answer is a resounding “no” if TheaterLab’s sharp and engrossing new production of The Invention of Love is any indication. Swiftly guided by director Zachary Eklind and starring the always magnificent David Greenspan along with a superb cast, this Invention proves that even a quasi‑biographical snapshot of an esteemed literary lion, at its essence, can (and should) be relatable to each and every audience member, to wit “The Everyman.”"
The Front Row Center
Reviewer: Holli Harms
Directed by Zachary Elkind the play moves at a steady gallop. The actors are a fine-tuned ensemble. Flowing in and out of the beautiful white box that is The Theaterlab. Bridget Lindsay’s sparse scenic design allows the space to hold the words, thoughts, and ideas without clutter. Alyssa Korol’s costumes are flowing Late Victorian era. I am not sure who, director or costume designer, decided on all the characters in Houseman’s past to be sans shoes or any covering to the feet, but that simple choice made them otherworldly, playful and light. The past coming back as best it can. It also made them silent as they moved about.
Exeunt NYC
“David Greenspan is a highlight in this Tom Stoppard revival, but directing choices and the dense text sometimes left Lorin Wertheimer perplexed.”
Reviewer: Lorin Wertheimer
The Invention of Love hasn’t gotten many productions, at least not as many as it deserves, perhaps because it is long, challenging, and largely about textual analysis. This MAP Theater production feels hurried, but when Elkind slows things down in some of the longer, two-person scenes, the play sings, such as when Greenspan, whose commanding, intense presence is almost hypnotic, meets his younger self. Lotan’s awkward, innocent college student is a wonderful counterpoint to Greenspan’s seasoned Housman, so distinct the latter is prompted to declare, “What a strange thing is a young man.” Other shining examples are the scene where young Housman finally admits his love to José Espinosa’s breezily daft Jackson, and when Wilde—a character Sam Bolen brings to wondrous life—finally meets Housman. Housman tells Wilde they were born at the wrong time, when “disavowal and endurance are in honor.” Wilde disagrees; they live in the best time. As for his persecution, he declares, “Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.”
TheaterScene.net
Reviewer: Tony Marinelli
At the center of this improbable vessel is David Greenspan, who gives one of those performances that make the phrase “command of language” sound insufficiently imposing. As the elderly Housman—identified in the play as AEH—Greenspan enters in a close-fitting three-piece academic suit, immaculate facial hair, and the deliberate gait of a man whose body has finally been persuaded to move at the same speed as his thoughts. He speaks Stoppard’s enormous sentences with an old-fashioned, almost declamatory musicality, and although the Theaterlab acoustics occasionally swallow a softened syllable, the overall effect is extraordinary. Greenspan does not seem to be delivering Stoppard’s prose so much as discovering it. Latin, Greek, textual criticism, literary gossip, manuscript variants, etymology, metaphysics, and the occasional barb emerge as if they were all part of the same nervous system. What could, in another actor’s hands, become an endurance test in the history of Western thought becomes something closer to chamber music. Greenspan makes Housman funny without making him cute, sorrowful without making him sentimental, and formidable without ever asking us to admire his cleverness. He simply inhabits it. Watching him negotiate this verbal Himalaya is itself worth the price of admission.
Theater Pizzazz
“Unrequited and Scholarly”
Reviewer: Alix Cohen
David Greenspan’s AE Housman is powerfully drawn; erudite, pigheaded, fiercely private, rueful, and loyal. Mordant wit crackles. If the actor’s voice rose and fell a little less dramatically, it would be clearer. As his young self, Yaron Lotan manifests seemingly effortless intellect in tandem with enthusiasm, restraint, naïveté and capacity for deep emotion. He’s sympathetic and believable.
This Week in New York
“Early though the laurel grows”
Reviewer: Mark Rifkin
You don’t have to be a Classics major to fall under the magical spell of The Invention of Love. Five-time Tony winner Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Coast of Utopia) is in complete control, glorying in the poetry of language and the science of literature, even as he gets carried away in the later moments. Six-time Obie winner Greenspan (Strange Interlude, Four Saints in Three Acts) is mesmerizing as AEH, a proud and resolute man who, sadly, was unable to live life to the fullest. It doesn’t matter that the words he speaks and thoughts he shares are ultracomplicated and often impossible to truly understand, because they roll off his tongue with such grace and beauty that you never want him to stop.
Times Square Chronicles
"David Greenspan is brilliant, but Tom Stoppard needs an editor"
Reviewer: Suzanna Bowling
"Greenspan is simply astonishing. Housman was a man possessed by language, and Greenspan has been handed a mountain of it. Dense, intricate, classical, academic, witty and frequently exhausting language pours out of him with such precision that he makes what must be an actor’s private circle of hell look effortless. Greenspan never appears to be reciting Stoppard. He appears to be thinking him."
Read Suzanna Bowling’s full review at Times Square Chronicles
Blogcritics
Reviewer: Jon Sobel
"But Greenspan’s casting drew me to the production just as much. The actor employs an old-school declamatory style perfect for Stoppard’s version of the dying septuagenarian Housman. It’s less perfect for the boxy space of this theater, where some of the actor’s musically softened syllables can get lost. But his Housman magnetizes, looking back on the poet’s student days, early career, and unrequited love for his school chum Moses Jackson (a warm and charismatic performance by José Espinosa)."
Off Off Online
Reviewer: Deirdre Donovan
"Stoppard’s remarkable gift for weaving exposition into wit and humor is evident from the outset, encapsulated in the conversation between the deceased Housman and Charon, the ferryman who is expecting a poet and scholar but does not quite know what to make of the one who arrives. Housman launches into a dry, mocking critique of Benjamin Jowett’s educational philosophy and the elite culture of 19th-century Oxford, the university where his brilliant performance in classics ultimately ended in a spectacular failure of the final examinations."
The Interested Bystander
Reviewer: Cary Wong
"Invention has Stoppard’s typical intellectually elliptical dialogue and themes, but it would have benefited from a demonstration of the love in its title and less of the theoretical, poetic analysis of it. In the new barebones, but very intimate, production at TheaterLab, enjoyably directed by Zachary Elkind, Stoppard’s witty conversations really take center stage, making the audience swim in early 19th century British discourse on classic literature with a good five-minutes spent on the placement of a comma."
Production photographs by Paul Lutvak.
More roundups from the New York season: what the critics made of The Holes at the Wild Project, and Simon Stone’s Korean-language The Cherry Orchard at the Park Avenue Armory.
The Invention of Love runs at Theaterlab, 357 West 36th Street, 3rd floor, through October 3.
