I first saw Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia in 1993 at the Theatre Royal Bath, when the play was touring following its premiere at the National Theatre in London. It was a joy to watch and I instantly fell in love with it. I rushed out to buy the text.
It was smart, and literate. The dialogue was sumptuous. The performances were wonderful. That original production starred Rufus Sewell as Septimus, tutor to Emma Fielding’s Thomasina in Sidley Park, the English country house where all the action occurs.
Thomasina is a child prodigy, with an uncanny grasp of mathematics. Septimus struggles to keep up as taunts and tantalises the various females in the house – at least those not being tantalised by his off-stage friend, Lord Byron.
Meanwhile in the present day Felicity Kendall’s Hannah Jarvis is having a war of wits with Bill Nighy’s fame seeking academic, Bernard Nightingale. Events are separated by about two hundred years, and yet are, of course completely linked.
Radio 3 broadcast an audio version of this original production later that same year. I dutifully recorded onto a pair of very hissy cassette tapes. Sadly, this version has never been released commercially, although if you hunt very very hard, you might just find it on the web.
In 2007, Radio 4 broadcast a new version of the play as part of a BBC Radio Stoppard season, with Jason Watkins as Bernard, Nicola Redmond as Hannah and Jack Laskey as Septimus. I’d love to be able to tell you that this version is available for purchase/download… But it’s not.
And now comes the first big revival of Arcadia in London since its original production. And it’s also the first live production I’ve seen since the NT’s production that I saw back in 1993.
The play has lost absolutely nothing in the intervening years, and is now studied regularly at A Level (I got to study The Pardoner’s Tale and Julius Caesar for my O Level Eng Lit. The former was barely in a form of English that I understood, and the latter only just. Students these days get to study much better stuff.).
This new production stars Dan Stevens as Septimus, Jessie Cave as Thomasina, Samantha Bond as Hannah Jarvis, and Neil Pearson as Bernard Nightingale.
At first it’s hard to shake off my recollection of the original casting – especially so with Bill Nighy. And Neil Pearson seems to display some of the larger-than-life attributes that Nighy had formerly brought to the role. But you soon settle down into the run of things. Pearson and Bond play off one another fantastically, and Stevens, like Sewell before him, is very rakish.
Teenage prodigies are surely hard to play – they’re mostly unlikeable in real life after all, but Cave does so well. Lucy Griffith as Chloe Coverly is very different to when I last saw her as Maid Marion in the recent TV version of Robin Hood – she still sends me weak at the knees though.
Tom Stoppard’s son Ed plays the thoughtful Coverly, and brings tremendous charm to the role.
The single set does the job well, and the music is minimal but nicely placed.
Overall, this new production is absolutely wonderful, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. The jokes are terrific from start to finish, and it’s just such a thoroughly thoughtful play.