Play: Arcadia
Playwright: Tom Stoppard
Production: In arrangement with the Royal National Theatre, London
Cast:
Thomasina Coverly: Sarah Walker
Septimus Hodge: Peter O'Brien
Jellaby: Ernie Gray
Ezra Chater: Frank Gallacher
Richard Noakes: Michael Carman
Lady Croom: Genevieve Picot
Captain Brice: Robert Grubb
Hannah Jarvis: Helen Morse
Chloe Coverly: Sally Cooper
Bernard Nightingale: Lewis Fiander
Valentine Coverly: Humphrey Bower
Gus and Augustus Coverly: Eamonn Kelly
Director: Roger Hodgman
Set designer: Shaun Gurton
Costume designer: Tracy Grant
Lighting designer: Jamieson Lewis
Assistant director: Claire Thomas
Original compositions: Eamonn Kelly
Production co-ordinator: Ian Cookesley
Stage manager: Robert Dallas
Assistant stage manager: Louise McRoberts
Piano: Eamonn Kelly
Sound recording: Kerry Saxby
Production photographs: Jeff Busby
Season: at the Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, from 23 February to 25 March, 1995
Rating: ****
Synopsis: a highly intellectual contemporary story is developed with a dual historical plot stream.
Notes:
Guy Rundle's review appeared in The Age, February 28. Rundle begins by couching Arcadia as a play about "whether science tells us about the nature of the world, or merely about the sort of society doing the science".
The thrust of Rundle's review is that Arcadia is more successful dramatically than it is in executing this philosophical exporation. Rundle is, overall, very positively disposed towards Arcadia, saying "It is undoubtedly one of (Stoppard's) best plays in years, sharply focused, tight as a drum, with deft character sketching, and a stream of funny lines that rarely fall into contrivance" - though he does remark that, on opening night at least, "everything preceding Scene Three could fairly be seen as the end of the last dress rehearsal".
Playwright and critic Jack Hibberd's review appeared in The Australian, March 3, 1995 and, in a lengthily sustained analysis, places Arcadia in its literary context - touching on past Stoppard works, and in various capacities, Samuel Beckett, G. B. Shaw, William Archer, Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Schnitzler, John Vanbrugh, Anton Chekhov and Arthur Miller.
Hibberd says he was expecting "a night of mirth, aesthetic connoisseurship and pseudo-intellectualism" - but that in fact, he got "rather more". He does note, however, that the production would profit from some cutting and added "performance zip".
For my part, the production lacked a certain acerbity, probably in the main because Lewis Fiander as a cunning academic, Bernard Nightingale, emphasised his role's comic qualities rather than amplifying the biting ambience that could have propelled the production overall into darker territories.
In short, this is an intellectually demanding evening which will unlikely appeal to those who look to the theatre for lightly diverting entertainment but enthrall those with a penchant for the theatre of ideas.