ARCADIA
ARCADIA, Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 12 February-2 April 2016. Photography by Heidrun Löhr: above - Georgia Flood and Ryan Corr; right: Blazey Best and Ryan Corr.
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play long ago achieved mythic status – as wryly acknowledged by this production’s director Richard Cottrell in his program notes:
“Since the 2016 program was announced, people have been saying to me ‘we’re so looking forward to Arcadia! It’s such a wonderful play!’ However long one has been directing, those words are guaranteed to produce a feeling of terror. Such enthusiasm gives one so much to live up to!”
Happily Cottrell’s chosen creative team and cast live up to those expectations and beyond. The Drama Theatre stage is transformed into an elegant palely painted room at “Sidley Park” in the Derbyshire countryside of some 200 years ago. It consists of symmetrical elements and perfect proportions beyond which is an unseen but easily imagined vista. (Set: Michael Scott-Mitchell, costumes: Julie Lynch; lighting: Damien Cooper.)
On a music stand placed centrally between the windows is displayed a garden designer’s re-visioning of that vista: a newly fashionable wilderness complete with pseudo hermitage and savage shrubberies to replace Nature, serenely tamed and elegant, via Capability Brown.
Dominating the chamber and the action is a table that takes literally Stoppard’s request that it be “large”: it must be some five or six metres in length. Nevertheless, it’s curiously unobtrusive and its purpose is only gradually revealed as the site of convergence – of ideas, everyday objects (including a large and quite charming tortoise) and the people who come and go around it, even while separated by two centuries. Perfect geometry and alchemy.
In 1809, taking her lessons at one end of the table is Thomasina (Georgia Flood) the not-quite-17-year-old daughter of the house. At the other end is her tutor and object of desire Septimus Hodge (Ryan Corr). The relationship between these two is dichotomous: she is much exercised by working on what will turn out to be – in 200 years time – chaos theory, while he is preoccupied by the effects of his cuckolding the splenetic Ezra Chater (Glenn Hazeldine).
At the other end of the intellectual spectrum is Thomasina’s mother Lady Croom (Blazey Best). Flirtation, her position in society, her gardens and her appearance are the matriarch’s burning concerns, together with Thomasina’s alarming passion for education.
In the present day – or 200 years later – is scrumptious and brainy Hannah Jarvis (Andrea Demetriades), the bestselling author of high class lit. She is researching the Sidley Park hermit in the hope that he might be the subject for her next New York Times No.1. Also there is disgruntled minor academic Bernard Nightingale (Josh McConville) whose sense of self-proclaimed literary genius is mightily wounded by the – in his view – undeserved success of his gorgeous rival. And that he fancies her and she is indifferent makes his predicament doubly irritating.
Suspended in time and space between these two groups and unseen by the audience is Lord Byron. His visit to Sidley Park is proved by an entry in the estate’s Game Book: he bagged a hare while out grouse shooting, it’s there in black and white. And so is a tiny sketch of the mysterious hermit – found by Hannah but in fact mischievously sketched in by Thomasina. What is true? What is real? Who knows? – only those watching from the auditorium and we are hidden from history!
And so it goes. Delicious chaos, dichotomies and contradictions abound in Stoppard’s play of science, theory, sex, physics, math, rarified ideas and sly wit. Its cleverness always seems deliberate and roguish however: get it and you feel a little bit smart, but actually it’s just clear enough to be understood anyway, so the joke is on the insecure after all and any sense of smug relief is entirely misplaced.
The brilliant cast of 12 has two hours and 45 minutes – including interval – to weave Stoppard’s gossamer-fine threads into one of the tightest and most entertaining plots ever devised. That each manages his or her part is a testament to their individual talents and to the way the director has orchestrated the ensemble into a magical whole.
Don’t expect a laugh a minute – it’s not like that. But do expect to be engaged, enthralled, amused and entertained in rare and satisfying fashion. Not to be missed.
