ARCADIA To 12 September 2009.
London.
ARCADIA
by Tom Stoppard.
Duke of Yorks Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 55min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6615.
www.ambassadortickets.com/london
Review: Mark Courtice 5 June 2009.
Clever, fun, theatrical, just what theatre ought to be .
Tom Stoppard is so brainy he must eat nothing but fish, but in Arcadia he wears this cleverness lightly. As he dances through the complications of entwining literature, chaos theory, mathematics, philosophy, language, gardening and academic politics, he has the grace to take us all with him.
He does it by using the whole armoury of theatre. There are tragedies, mysteries, jokes, sex, and some set-piece arguments so intellectually exciting that you just want to get stuck in to Newton and Fermat's last theorem.
The play starts in a great house in the early nineteenth century, where a garden is being designed in the romantic Gothic style, then moves to the present day, where a couple of academics are trying, through a few misleading clues, to piece together a tragedy in the past we have been watching. The switching between these two cleverly created and connected worlds is carried out with enormous skill, and by the end the two are running in parallel.
The play’s world is the schoolroom; in David Leveaux' production it’s huge and bland (the costumes are more richly imagined), a bare canvas on which Leveaux makes the clever stuff and the jokes work well, although the emotions are hampered by austerity.
The acting provides the colour and excitement, particularly in the 19th Century. Here Dan Stevens keeps tutor Septimus Hodge charming, rakish, and louche as he just manages to keep up intellectually with his charge, Thomasina; in this difficult role Jessie Cave is believably a young genius while growing up in front of our eyes.
In the present, Neil Pearson and Samantha Bond give Stoppard's verbal and intellectual fireworks real bite, while convincing us their characters are dangerously attractive to the less successfully realised young descendants of the original family. Pearson takes risks; sometimes he’s crudely venal, sometimes exploding with enthusiasm in a performance that doesn’t mind looking battily undignified.
Arcadia proves a fizzing, crackling, exciting evening in this incarnation, even if the less skilful handling of the 20th Century and the visual restraint of the 19th blur the emotional path of this intricate play.
Thomasina Coverly: Jessie Cave.
Septimus Hodge: Dan Stevens.
Jellaby: Sam Cox.
Ezra Chater: George Potts.
Richard Noakes: Trevor Cooper.
Lady Croom: Nancy Carroll.
Captain Brice: Tom Hodgkins.
Hannah Jarvis: Samantha Bond.
Chloë Coverly: Lucy Griffiths.
Bernard Nightingale: Neil Pearson.
Valentine Coverley: Ed Stoppard.
Gus Coverley/Augustus Coverley: Hugh Mitchell.
Director: David Leveaux.
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler.
Lighting: Paul Anderson.
Music: Corin Buckeridge.
Choreography: Scarlett Mackmin.
Costume: Amy Roberts.
2009-06-07 01:43:44