Detling Players presented
Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard
on May 8th - 10th 2003
|
|
Detling Players presented Arcadia by Tom Stoppard on May 8th - 10th 2003 |
In a room on the garden front of a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sit Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the "500 acres inclusive of lake" where Capability Brown's idealised landscape is about to give way to the Romantic fashion for the "picturesque" Gothic style - "everything but vampires", as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later. Right:
Emma Johnson as thirteen-year-old maths genius Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which took place (if it ever did take place) at Sidley Park when the as yet little known Lord Byron stayed there (if he ever did). His research is to find its way into print under the apt title: "Et In Arcadia Ego: Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley Park". |
 |
|
|
Tom Stoppard's play switches back and forth between the centuries. His characters, including the Coverlys then and now, are simultaneously the investigators and the object lessons of such topics as the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life, "the attraction" as Valentine says, "which Newton left out". Left: Thomasina plays the Broadwood "square" piano used to record the music heard in Detling Players' Arcadia |
"I have never left a 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 a time never to be regained." (Sunday Times)
"Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy: a play of wit, intellect, brio and emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow." (New York Times)
ARCADIA's many honours include the Olivier Award, the London Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Award for Best Play, and the Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. ARCADIA received its world premiere in London by the National Theatre in April 1993.
Background on Arcadia - a fascinating site about the play from Skidmore College, Sarasota Springs, N.Y. it features contributions from nine different departments including Mathematics, Physics and Classics as well as English and Theatre Studies. And all this about a very funny comedy.
