Arcadia - Duke of York's Theatre (review)
Review by Lizzie Guilfoyle
WHEN Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia was first performed at the National Theatre in 1993 it went on to win an Olivier Award for Best New Play. As credentials go, they don’t come much better than that. Now, after a 16 year absence, the first major London revival has opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre and David Leveaux’ production has done nothing to tarnish its well-earned reputation.
Stoppard’s multi-faceted comedy is set entirely in the drawing room of Sidley Park, a stately home in Derbyshire where, in 1809, gifted pupil Thomasina Coverly (Jessie Cave) proposes a startling theory, one she cannot fully comprehend. Meanwhile, all around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus Hodge (Dan Stevens), are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries.
Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah Jarvis (Samantha Bond) and Bernard Nightingale (Neil Pearson) are respectively investigating a hermit who once lived in the grounds of Sidley Park and Lord Byron’s sudden departure to Europe, two fact-finding missions that lead them back to 1809.
Arcadia‘s intricately woven plot is littered with references to mathematics, physics, Latin, poetry, chaos theory vs. determinism (particularly in the context of love and death), landscape gardening and carnal embraces, so it doesn’t do to let the mind wander. But don’t let this put you off because you don’t need a Masters Degree in physics (or anything else for that matter) to understand what’s going on. Besides, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny.
The cast is superb. As precocious teenager Thomasina, Cave is a delight, not least because she takes abnoxious out of precocious and adds endearing instead. In fact, from her self-assured performance, it’s difficult to believe that this young lady is making her West End debut in Arcadia and I’ll be surprised if we don’t see a great deal more of her in the future.
Pearson too excels as the ambitious and somewhat cadish Nightingale whose displays of enthusiasm have all the finesse of an excitable puppy at play. Indeed, it’s his theorizing on the pronounciation of the word ha-ha shortly after his introduction to a bemused Jarvis that first reveals his passionate nature and sparks their fiery relationship. With regards to the latter, physical chemistry is of paramount importance and Pearson and Bond deliver in spades.
Nancy Carroll’s Lady Croom is as flirtatious as she is dignified and marvellously droll in her refusal to embrace the future; Stevens’ Septimus is more than a match for the charismatic but strangely elusive Lord Byron; and Ed Stoppard’s Valentine is the antithesis of Bernard – despite his first words being “Sod”, though as for how many, I didn’t count!
The scenes slip effortlessly from past to present and back again, the props – books, coffee mugs, quill pens, portfolios, laptop computers and even a tortoise named Lightning – remaining exactly as they were. Only in the final scene do the two collide with the action taking place simultaneously in each.
This is a very fine production of Arcadia, one guaranteed to amuse and keep you alert in equal measure, making it a welcome addition to a West End that already has much to commend it.
Other cast members:
George Potts as Ezra Chater
Trevor Cooper as Richard Noakes
Tom Hodgkins as Captain Brice
Lucy Griffiths as Chloe Coverly
Hugh Mitchell as Gus and Augustus Coverly
Sam Cox as Jellaby
Read more about the cast and creative team