REVIEW: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Words by Ngoc Lan Tran
Adelaide University Theatre Guild’s newest production is the great Czech-born British playwright’s undeniable masterwork: Arcadia. Juggling around the witticisms, politics, literature, song, dance, and intellectual gymnastic, Arcadia sets the scene in the same room of Sidley Park but centuries apart.
Centering the spinning plates of drama and intellect, Matthew Chapman’s faithful production of Arcadia is a double celebration of Tom Stoppard’s dazzling work and the theatre’s endless enchantment. His ensemble is diverse in experience but equal in talent, an orchestra working in seamless harmony that delivers truth and intention to Stoppard’s words.
In present-day, a detective/academic investigation into the life of Lord Byron is “discovered” by literature professor Bernard Nightingale (John Rosen), whose work is frequently evaluated by historical writer Hannah Jarvis (Alison Scharber). A determined interchange of opposition, cooperation, and attraction unfolds, brilliantly highlighted by Rosen’s forceful presence and Scharber’s incisive work as the two hot-headed academics.
The Byron hypothesis is slowly tested out alongside the romantic-comedic plotlines during and after 1809. Byron was a guest at Sidley Park, whose presence is markedly absent but resonantly felt in the lives of Thomasina Coverly (Pari Nehvi) and Septimus Hodge (Robert Baulderstone). Nehvi’s performance is bright as the youthful prodigy with a predilection to knowledge and the “carnal embrace,” a suited match to Baulderstone’s earnest enclosure of depth to the wily-humoured charismatic tutor.
The production is evenly persuasive in the high of playfulness and the solemnity of conflict. And it is not entirely falling upon the shoulders of the two sets of characters. Spirited and impossible to miss are the supporting cast of Monika Lapka (Chloe Coventry), Tyrone Le Fleur (Jellaby), George Yankovych (Captain Brice), Rohan Cassidy (Richard Noakes), and Frederick Pincombe (Augustus/Gus). Kate Anolak’s Lady Croom, Guy Henderson’s Valentine Coverly, and Maxwell Whigham’s Ezra Charter are clearly palpable as they make up the colorful and complex register of intellects and personas.
Chapman’s direction with the stagecraft of Ellen Demaagd and Stephen Dean offers a thoughtful and entertaining guidance through the daunting randomness of what Arcadia is supposed to be about. Indeed, many have cited Stoppard’s play as one constant with scintillating ideas; the audience will be very easily taken away by the collisions of geometry and poetry, algorithms and gardening, sex and architecture, classical and romantic, past and future. Yet, in the midst of the seemingly chaotic randomness of things, Arcadia’s lodestar remains achingly and unassumingly human.
This play is for those, like Stoppard, who have developed an appetite for knowledge and unafraid to be enraptured in a bit of chaos. And for those who still may hold reservations about being swept under the fast pace of heart and intellect, this production is still one enjoyable heck of a ride. Intellectual purists, country bumpkins and all those in between are all encouraged to take part in this remarkable theatrical event.
