Arcadia

Black Swan State Theatre Company presents Arcadia.

Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April 1809. Surrounded by eccentric family members, fastidious house guests and surly staff, tutor Septimus Hodge is in charge of educating Lady Thomasina Coverley, aged thirteen.

Beyond the grand windows are the ‘500 acres inclusive of lake’, where Capability Brown’s artificially manicured naturescape is about to give way to the fashionably ‘picturesque’ Gothic style of landscape gardening. 180 years later, garden historian Hannah Jarvis and academic Bernard Nightingale stand in the same room, trying to shed light on the garden’s secrets and uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park in Lady Thomasina’s time…

Stoppard’s absorbing play jumps back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time and the confusing and disruptive influence of sexual attraction on our orbits in life.

“Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia… is the greatest love story on the British stage for decades… a masterpiece.” The Independent