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Four syllables, but is it a play?
Past and present merge in the candlelight of Arcadia Arcadia
Malvern Theatres
ORDER and
chaos, free will and determinism, the past and the present, Tom
Stoppard’s Arcadia
is an intellectual exploration of sophisticated ideas in a dramatised
context that is intellectually too clever to make any sense of for most
of the population! It may tickle the wits of a few of the
intellectual elite of the nation but it is will never entertain the masses. Arcadia is a play that is set in both the
past and the present. The location is Sidley Park where in the early
1800s Septimus Hodge, a contemporary and friend of Lord Byron, is
employed as tutor to the precocious teenager, Thomasina Coverly, and he
is trying to instruct her in mathematics, Latin and indeed the meaning
of a ‘carnal embrace’! He is also a critic of the poetry of the period
and specifically of the works of Ezra Chater who is staying at Sidley.
By extolling the virtues of his latest collection, ‘The Couch of Eros’,
he manages to pacify Chater whose wife’s carnal embraces he is enjoying. As time passes and he becomes emotionally
involved with the developing Thomasina, so he is later bereaved when she
dies an early death in late teenage and he becomes a hermit on the site. In the present day we meet Hannah Jarvis who is
an historical researcher who is at Sidley to uncover the secrets of the
hermit in the grounds at Sidley; there she meets Bernard Nightingale, a
university lecturer who is researching the life of Byron. Meanwhile Valentine Coverly, Hannah’s ‘fiancée’,
is exploring the population biology of the grouse, utilising the grounds
and the game book records to do so. The play is full of very fast-moving dialogue
that is not always easy to follow because it is both intellectually
sophisticated and too quick for most to follow if they have not
previously studied the text or already seen the play. As such I have to say I do not think it works
well as theatre. The majority of critics acclaim it as a masterpiece.
However if you need to have studied the text of a play before seeing it
realised on stage, or you need a considerable intellectual familiarity
with the philosophical concepts being explored in order to enjoy the
experience in the theatre, it seems to me it does not truly succeed! It
may be great literature, but not great theatre. This is unfortunate because the realisation of
the piece by the English Touring Theatre is excellent. The cast is
strong: Robert Cavanah (Bernard Nightingale), Wilf Scolding (Septimus
Hodge), Flora Montgomery (Hannah Jarvis) and Ed MacArthur (Valentine
Coverly) stand out in particular. The quality of their voices and
delivery are beautifully contrasted. The set is striking and grand, there is a
crispness to the show and a sharpness in the delivery of lines that
helps to hold attention even when one is struggling to follow the
arguments. The visual impact of the candle-lit scene near the end is
beautiful. Furthermore we are treated to many brilliant
Stoppard witticisms: ‘As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in
ignorance!' Septimus is told. Elsewhere, ‘Would you prefer not to
be worth insulting?’ For all the excellence of the realisation of this
celebrated piece, it remains for me greater as a piece of literature
than as theatre. Tim Crow
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