Arcadia

‘Arcadia’ by Sir Tom Stoppard premiered in 1993. The next year it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and a year later, a Tony Award, again for Best Play. Amazingly, ‘Arcadia’ was also on the 2006 shortlist for the Royal Institute’s award for ‘the best science book ever written’ - The winner was The Periodic Table by Primo Levi ! Stoppard also won an Academy Award for his 1998 film script ‘Shakespeare in Love’.

As a 2yr old child, TomáÅ¡ Straüssler (Stoppard) fled from the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, eventually settling in the UK.

This delightfully written love story has been described as ‘the finest play, from one of the most significant contemporary playwrights in the English language’, quite a complement.

This 165-minute play is showing at the Heath Ledger Theatre, in the State Theatre Centre of WA, Northbridge nightly at 7.30, with Saturday matinees at 2.15 and Sunday matinees at 5.00 pm. Performances run until Sunday 1^st April.


 
        It is 1809 at Sidley Park, the 500-acre Derbyshire country estate of Lord and the matriarchal figure, Lady Croom (Rebecca Davis). The grounds were designed and created in the Gothic-style by Capability Brown.
        A friend of Lord Byron, researcher Septimus Hodge (Scott Sheridan) is the tutor in charge of the Croom’s children, Lady Thomasina Coverley (Whitney Richards) their thirteen years old, highly gifted daughter and their son, August (William McNeill). Out of the blue Thomasina asks Septimus the meaning of ‘carnal embrace’, Hodge tries to side step the question, but the young girl is persistent. She cringes as he explains the ‘messy process’ of carnal knowledge before she returns to her challenge of proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
       Septimus also looks after ‘the needs’ of the older ladies of the household. Mrs Chater, wife of a terrible poet is one of Septimus’s ladies. The fop, Ezra Chater (Brendan Hanson, delightful performance) realising Septimus has defiled his wife and was behind the negative reviews of his poetry anthology, challenges Septimus to a duel.
      The house is filled with an odd mix of family and fussy guests, being attended to by the crotchety butler, Jellaby (Edgar Metcalfe), who conveys scandal and billet-doux. When the blundering Mr Noakes (Steve Turner) the gardener informs Lady Croom of Septimus’s love affair, through jealousy she asks Mrs Chater to leave the estate. This she does, and heads overseas to the Dutch East Indies with her husband and Lady Croom’s brother, Captain Brice (Benj D’Addario).
      Time skips forward180 years to the present day.  Hannah Jarvis (Kirsty Hillhouse), who wrote a blockbuster exposé about Lady Caroline Lamb and Byron's affair at Sidley Park, is now researching the estate’s mysterious hermit. She is in the drawing room with a professor of literature, the babbling Bernard Nightingale (Andrew McFarlane). Bernard whilst trying to prove the outrageous behaviour behind the poet’s stay at the estate, foolishly publicly announces that Lord Byron killed Ezra Chater in a duel.
      Giggly Chloé Coverly (Adriane Duff), 18 yrs old daughter of a much later Lady Croom, is also a discerning and brilliant physicist. She has a theory that the Newtonian universe doesn’t function properly because of the problems that sex creates. Chloé has two brothers, maths graduate Valentine (Nick Maclaine) who, in a Mendel-like way, is researching the grouse. The other brother is Gus, mute since the age of five. The children are powerful links, in the juxtaposing between the past and present. Hannah is elated to find Thomasina's notebooks containing her thoughts on the chaos theory.
      As the play progresses the same setting sees increasingly rapid changes in time, from the early 1800s to present day, this chaos has the audience questioning truth and time. This helps emphasise Thomasina’s chaos theory and has her going on to develop the second law of thermodynamics before Newton did. Hannah’s research goes on to tell us how Thomasina sadly died.
 
 
Stoppard has the ‘present day’ characters trying to research the 1809 characters in retrospect. As shown by the much discussed chaos theory, it is a little like looking at a cake and trying to make sense of the original ingredients and how the present state was arrived at. As Thomasina suggests, chaos can also be hundreds of seemingly random factors, as in the weather – every day can be different – but eventually a pattern will emerge. Don’t let this scientific talk put you off seeing this very brilliant character study, the 1809 era is extremely funny and the present day, whilst having a few dry moments, is totally fascinating. Bernard’s excitable and dippy manner was beautifully contrasted with Hannah’s surefooted approach.

The set (designer Alicia Clements) is stunning, with a drawing room in the style of a sun lounge, with tall white walls and massive windows topped by a glass domed roof. The beech parquetry floor and antique furniture gave the necessary ageless look to the room. The openness of the area allowed the various times of the day to be shown by the superb lighting (one source Trent Suidgeest, another source David Murray – a modern day chaos problem?) with the warm glow of dusk to the cool of the night. The brief firework display was most effective.

Sound Designer Ash Gibson Greig composed some wonderful themes for the two eras. Ingeniously he employed the letters of the scale that were to be found in the name ‘Arcadia’ and devised a few delightful background themes. The costumes (Alicia Clements) were simple, but most attractive in design.

Kate Cherry, the director, was at her best. The actors were perfectly cast, from the curious innocence of Thomasina, the sexy Septimus to the bubbly Chloe. They all captured the language style and accents beautifully (accent coach Jenny Davis). There was plenty of action, with odd scenes almost being in the farce genre. Kate clearly depicted the romanticism and the older classic style.

At times I found the play reminiscent of another Black Swan production, ‘When the rain stops falling’, with its many flash backs in time, and blending of dichotomous eras in the same room. Again the room filled with family members from diverse periods, who moved around smoothly without any confusion as to which generation they belonged. The true-to-life movement was devised by Lisa Scott-Murphy.
 
As well as the main two threads, there were numerous other references to art, such as ‘the Shepherds of Arcadia’, along with science, mechanics and entropy that I would love to study again with another viewing of the play. The rich and dense script may be a little difficult at first. Viewing two or three performances would still present a multitude of new and interesting topics that had previously slipped through.

This play is the Cherry on the cake. Full of fun, tremendously well acted and presented. Stunning.