'Arcadia' review — Tom Stoppard's masterpiece is a beautiful hymn to the power of the human brain

Read our review of Arcadia, directed by Carrie Cracknell, now in performances at the Old Vic to 21 March.

Summary

• Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia gets a major revival at the Old Vic
• The complex piece is set in two centuries and explores numerous ideas
• The excellent ensemble features Prasanna Puwanarajah and Isis Hainsworth
• Fiona Button also impresses as flirtatious Lady Croom

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia is often heralded as his best, and here receives its first revival at the address which staged his breakthrough in 1967, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead. It’s also the first since the playwright’s passing late last year.

Summarising a story that centres around ideas ranging from iterative algorithms to romanticism and chaos theory is no mean feat, but in essence it’s about two sets of people living two centuries apart who are trying to unlock mysteries. In Carrie Cracknell’s stripped-back, in-the-round production, Stoppard’s densely intellectual dialogue is given centre stage, while his dual-era narrative is enriched through subtle and sensitive overlapping.

In the 1990s, writer Hannah Jarvis (Leila Farzad) and academic Bernard Nightingale (Prasanna Puwanarajah) are arguing over the extent to which Lord Byron was embroiled in a duel at a Derbyshire country estate which, in 1809, is about to have its grounds remodelled. Guests include precocious young student Thomasina Coverly (Isis Hainsworth), her dynamic tutor Septimus Hodge (Seamus Dillane), who’s having an affair with her mother, and the unseen Byron.

At times it can feel like being given an IQ test in dramatic form, but don’t be intimidated by the jumble of scientific terminology (there’s a helpful guide to this side of things in the programme). There are plenty of laughs, many courtesy of Puwanarajah’s enjoyably pompous Bernard (“kiss my cycle-clips”), and tenderness too. Modern-day mathematics student Valentine (Angus Cooper) joyously explains the brilliance of Thomasina’s theories, while her relationship with Septimus celebrates the unknowable force of attraction, culminating in a waltz laden equally with chemistry and tragic irony.

It’s also striking watching it now, in an age preoccupied with the rise of artificial intelligence, the extent to which it’s a hymn to the power of the human brain. Stoppard writes with the zeal of a curious mind leaping across the lily pads of other people’s ideas. It’s impossible not to be infected by his sheer love of thinking.

The production is given a spare design by Alex Eales, featuring a round table at its centre which clutters up with items from both eras (there’s something faintly depressing about the sight of coke cans next to leather books), and costumed by Suzanne Cave with an exquisite eye for period detail. It all feels suitably reverent, and thrillingly intimate. The ensemble, which also includes Fiona Button as overbearing flirt Lady Croom, Matthew Steer as gullible would-be poet Ezra Chater and Holly Godliman as the free-spirited Chloe Coverly, are evenly balanced and bring a chamber quality to their performances. This isn’t an evening of virtuosic peacocking, and nor does it need to be.

Even if at points he’s guilty of wearing his learning a little too heavily, and the running time of nearly three hours feels indulgent, Stoppard nevertheless drops pearl after pearl of linguistic brilliance throughout. One particularly bright one is delivered by Septimus, when he compares the history of humanity to a procession: “We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind.” Hearing that now, you’re struck by just how much he has left us to gather.

Arcadia is at the Old Vic to 21 March. Book Arcadia tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Arcadia (Photos by Manuel Harlan)