Tom Stoppard’s Arcardia is coming of age – English Touring Theatre and Theatre Royal Brighton Productions present this timely revival on the Oxford stage 21 years since it first played at the National in London in 1993.
Set in a 19th Century Derbyshire country estate over 100 years apart, chaos and secret desires abound, and the audience is thrown between past and present as the house and inhabitants gradually reveal their secrets. Opening in a sparse Jane Austin-esque drawing room scene of the early 19th Century, a handsome science tutor Septimus Hodge, skips through wit and wordplay, as he teaches his precocious but talented 13 year old ward Thomasina. Her thirst for knowledge sees no bounds, the play beginning with the words ‘Septimus, what is carnal embrace?’, yet the young girl makes a startling discovery, which leads to a series of consequences that slowly unravels affecting all the lives of those involved.
As the play shifts to the present, Hannah and Bernard (an historian and academic respectively) attempt to piece together the fragmented story step by step, of Septimus, Thomasina and possibly a feted trip of Lord Byron to Sidney Park, on the same set in the same house. The play unfolds episodically between these two timelines, and slowly the tension is built-up until in the final scene they appear on stage at the same time, falling over each other physically and verbally as the structure between the two worlds dissolve.
The demanding nature of this play, with its challenging script and speed of delivery leaves little room for error. Yet the cast coped admirably, and managed to reproduce Stoppard’s sparkling sharp wit with panache and a human heart, which by the last scene is powerfully affecting. By the finale the audience is left with the thought that the passage of time and advances in knowledge or technology make little difference, and the progress of history is as unknowable as ever.
When it first premiered at the National in 1993 it won countless awards (including the 1993 Olivier), was lauded by critics and is often cited as one of the nation’s favourite plays and it is easy to see why. Beautifully crafted, although not completely without its faults, Arcardia is a play of contradictions, poetry and science, romanticism and intimacy which effortlessly flows between the past and present drawing on issues of memory. It is one of the stand-out plays of its generation and this revival re-enforces its position arguably as Stoppard’s masterpiece. ★★★★★ Philip Smith 14/04/15
