Tom Stoppard is renowned for throwing different worlds into chaotic collision courses in his plays, and exploring the results with wit, intellect and dazzling theatricality. ARCADIA is no exception. It is set in an English country mansion which is inhabited by the Coverly family in the early nineteenth century, and simultaneously by their present-day descendants. Intruding into this world are a couple of competing academics, who seek the truth about Lord Byron’s presence in the house on 10th April 1809.
The result is a play which is unequivocally Stoppard’s best work to date. It is part detective story, part love story, part farcical comedy, with mathematics, literature, landscape gardening and chaos theory thrown in for good measure. It is funny and exhilarating in its use of language and irony whilst also creating characters whose lives we come to genuinely care about. The dual narrative which the audience is privy to also enables Stoppard to poke fun at academia’s need to reconstruct a history which is often wildly divergent from the truth.
And what exactly did the Romantic poet Lord Byron get up to on that night during his misspent youth?Click on any of the links below to discover more about aspects of:
