Arcadia (2008)

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Poster by Poster Designer

by Tom Stoppard

Directed by Anton Krause

Performances: Tuesday 2nd - Saturday 6th September 2008, Bell Theatre


Introduction

Stoppard’s 1993 comedy Arcadia has long been hailed as his greatest work amongst an impressive list of critical and commercial successes.

Set in 1809 and the present day in the same room in Sidley Park, Derbyshire, this funny and moving story revolves around members of the Croom family, as well as visitors to their estate and their modern day counterparts.

Thomasina, the 13 year old maths prodigy has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, seeking of her tutor Septimus the meaning of Fermat’s Last Theorum, Chaos Theory and carnal embrace in one dizzying lesson. Septimus, no stranger to carnal embrace himself, has to avoid a duel with second-rate poet Ezra Chater following a ‘perpendicular poke’ with Chater’s wife in the gazebo. Meanwhile Lady Croom has her own designs on Septimus, ‘Culpability’ Noakes, the landscape architect, has designs on her ladyship's gardens and dashing young romantic Lord Byron is game for anything.

These scenes alternate with those involving pompous academic Bernard Nightingale, researcher Hannah Jarvis and mathematician Valentine Coverly as they work, in the present day, to uncover the truth of the past from clues left in books, letters and commodes. Whilst we see the truth of these events, our modern day sleuths manage to jump to the most unlikely conclusions with only the scantest of evidence. Did the young Byron murder Chater in a duel before fleeing the country, what is the significance of a tropical monkey bite and who is the mysterious hermit living in the grounds?

This play shows Stoppard at his mind-blowing best as he plays havoc with time and his characters sensibilities and we, the audience, are the only ones invited to the party. Alternating between past and present we see how those in the past yearn to know the future, while our own contemporaries long for the past. In the final scene both sets of characters occupy the same space and play out their own conclusions separated by the centuries.


Arcadia won the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Play and the 1995 New York Drama Critics Award.

"I have never left a new play more convinced that I'd just witnessed a masterpiece." Daily Telegraph

“This is a brilliant, brilliant play. A play of ideas, of consummate theatricality, of sophisticated entertainment and of heartache for time never to be regained” Sunday Times

Cast

Crew

Reviews

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Gallery

Reminiscences and Anecdotes

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See Also

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References

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External Links

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