Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia has a wide following that holds it up as one of the prime delights of contemporary dramatic writing, taking an innovative idea of juxtaposing two time periods within the same room of “Sidley Park” to think about ideas of causality and historical interpretation. This play will last, say the critics! So, with this pressure how does St. Hilda’s Drama Society latest theatrical offering fare? Pretty well, I believe.
The play is notable for its difficult combination of the intellectual and the human – theoretical physics and scandal in the same line, that kind of thing! – and the cast seem to have the right idea of how to deal with these different modes. It is to be “character-driven”, articulating the fraught emotional conflicts with the ideas as a kind of top layering to stimulate in a quite different way. This is all fine if the energy is high and the tension maintained, which it largely was, though in a particularly cerebral scene of talk about chaos theory and iteration, anyone could be forgiven for a slight lapse.
The opening scene was especially strong, as tutor Septimus explains to the naïve Thomasina the nature of “carnal embrace”. The witty repartee was carried by Jonnie Griffiths (Septimus) and Alice Gray (Thomasina) with ease, and the performance of Thomasina’s sharpness and liveliness was particularly engaging. On the other hand, the later entry of Ezra Chater to accuse Septimus of “carnally embracing” his wife (I wonder if that phrase ever really was used…?) in the gazebo (of all places). Chater was convincingly enraged, but the conflict seemed too quickly resolved as Chater and Septimus sit side-by-side – a certain bumbling susceptibility to manipulation did not come across, so the reasoning did not seem entirely there.
The overall aesthetic is to juxtapose lavish Victorian period costume and antique furniture with the simplicity of the modern day. Objects will accumulate from both periods on the central table of the set – as much a dialogue between the two periods as the historical investigations that dominate the modern day story and as the sudden flow of characters onto the stage during the last scene from both these different moments in time simultaneously.
As it is the play is reaching towards a polished state, promising both thought and laughter, should all go well before next week’s opening night – one to keep an eye on!
