Twenty-one years young, Tom Stoppard's drama of gardening and chaos theory – in which we witness events in a Derbyshire country house taking place more than a century apart – is regularly cited as one of the great plays of the last 50 years, and the playwright's undisputed masterpiece. I wouldn't dream of disagreeing: this is a play of ideas that pits the classical against the romantic, science against poetry, the past against the present. But it has a racing heart, too, exploring what it is that makes us human and our determination to keep dancing even as the darkness gathers and the universe grows cold.

Labbadia isn’t alone. On the whole, Arcadia’s actors, who are undoubtedly capable of more, are painting with single colors and not bright ones. Wonder is a primary component of the play — it practically runs on the electricity of discovery, the ecstasy of poetry, the distinctively human hunger for beauty. Its other engine is humor: The scenes that take place in 1809 are, for a long time, high comedy in the Oscar Wilde vein, and the play’s modern characters are no slouches in the wit department either. These are people who say things like, “Do not dabble in paradox, Edward. It puts you in danger of fortuitous wit” and — in a single breath — “There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo with a woman whose reputation could not be adequately defended with a platoon of musketry deployed by rota.” The 2009 London revival prompted more critics to laud the play as "Stoppard's finest work". [51] Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian that the play "gets richer with each viewing. ... [T]here is poetry and passion behind the mathematics and metaphysics." [52] Johann Hari of The Independent speculated that Arcadia would be recognised "as the greatest play of its time". [53] In the other -- the present -- an author, Hannah Jarvis, a scholar, Bernard Nightingale, and the scientist (and one of the children of the house) Valentine are the main figures. In Scene 2, which zooms forward to the present day, Bernard, a scholar of the Romantic era, arrives at Sidley Park. He meets Hannah, another academic who is already there, studying the garden and the Sidley hermit, who she thinks symbolizes Romanticism. Bernard professes to be interested in Chater’s poetry, having found a copy of “The Couch of Eros,” but Hannah uncovers him for who he really is—a Byron obsessive who’d written a mean review of her previous book. Despite Hannah’s dislike of him, Bernard decides to stay around Sidley Park to do research. He thinks he may have found evidence that Byron was a houseguest at the same time as Chater, and that they dueled, with Byron killing Chater. We also meet the modern-day Coverly siblings, the current residents of Sidney Park, Valentine, Chloë, and Gus.On the other hand, Noakes's vision of the garden is Gothic and mysterious, characteristic of Romanticism. He dreams of replacing the old gazebo with a hermitage, draining the lake, and putting in an obelisk. Noakes's ideas aren't practical, but like Romanticism, they are compelled by a rugged natural aesthetic and emotion. The play opens on 10 April 1809, in a garden-front room of the house. Septimus Hodge is trying to distract 13-year-old Thomasina from her curiosity about " carnal embrace" by challenging her to prove Fermat's Last Theorem; he also wants to focus on reading the poem "The Couch of Eros" by Ezra Chater, who with his wife is a guest at the house. Thomasina starts asking why jam mixed in rice pudding can never be unstirred, which leads her to the topic of determinism and to a beginning theory about chaotic shapes in nature. This is interrupted by Chater himself, who is angry that his wife was caught in the aforementioned "carnal embrace" with Septimus; he has come to demand a duel. Septimus tries to defuse the situation by heaping praise on Chater's "The Couch of Eros". The tactic works, because Chater does not know it was Septimus who had savaged an earlier work of his, "The Maid of Turkey". Landscape architect Richard Noakes enters, shortly accompanied by Captain Brice and Lady Croom; the three discuss proposed modifications to the Arcadian style gardens, while Thomasina sketches an imaginary hermit on Noakes's technical drawing of the garden. In 1809, Thomasina Coverly, the daughter of the house, is a precocious teenager with ideas about mathematics, nature, and physics well ahead of her time. She studies with her tutor Septimus Hodge, a friend of Lord Byron (an unseen guest in the house). In the present, writer Hannah Jarvis and literature professor Bernard Nightingale converge on the house: she is investigating a hermit who once lived on the grounds; he is researching a mysterious chapter in the life of Byron. As their studies unfold – with the help of Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology – the truth about what happened in Thomasina's time is gradually revealed.

Hunter, Jim (2000). "Arcadia". Tom Stoppard. Faber Critical Guides. London: Faber. p.155. ISBN 0-571-19782-5. Arcadia, by intertwining two stories of the past and present of the same family, begs a particular question: what is the meaning of self and how does one know it? The stories are strictly separate plots, settings and worlds; however, there persists the same question of identity for all characters. All admire Stoppard's erudition, wordplay, and clever and intricate plotting, but most voice concern about there being too much intellectual preening on Stoppard's part. Arcadia offers us the terrifying prospect of our most intelligent and referential dramatist finally vanishing up his own brilliance: it is in the end a play about everything and nothing, in which knowledge is all and caring is nil." - Sheridan Morley, The SpectatorRush, David (2005). A Student Guide to Play Analysis. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2609-9.

The scene has changed to the present day, apparent from the clothing of the characters on stage. The action of Arcadia shifts from the early nineteenth century to the present day. The setting is still Sidley Park, but there have been changes in the surrounding landscape with time. The modern day characters, Hannah, Chloe, and Bernard, sit in the same room as Thomasina and Septimus. Bernard Nightingale, critic, comes to meet Hannah at the estate. Bernard is looking for information on Ezra Chater. Hannah is looking for information on the Sidley Hermit, whose death she attributes to the breakdown of the Romantic Imagination. Bernard tells Hannah he wants to collaborate with her on a project. Apparently, Bernard's copy of Ezra Chater's The Couch of Eros belonged to Lord Byron and inside the book there are three documents that have led Bernard to believe Lord Byron killed Chater in a duel. Bernard believes that Lord Byron slept with Chater's wife, which led Chater to challenge Lord Byron to a duel die by his hand. Because Lord Byron left the US in 1809, soon after Chater published his last known work, Bernard assumes he was fleeing. The next scene is set in the same location in the 20th century. Romantic scholar Hannah Jarvis is researching Sidley Park and its mysterious hermit. She is joined by Bernard Nightingale, an older scholar and critic, who pretends to be a fan of Chater's poetry in the hopes that Hannah will share her research. The first New York production opened in March 1995, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. [40] It was again directed by Trevor Nunn, but with an entirely new cast. It starred Billy Crudup as Septimus, Blair Brown as Hannah, Victor Garber as Bernard, Robert Sean Leonard as Valentine and Jennifer Dundas as Thomasina. This production was the Broadway debut of Paul Giamatti, who played Ezra Chater. The other actors were Lisa Banes (Lady Croom), Richard Clarke (Jellaby), John Griffin (Gus/Augustus), Peter Maloney (Noakes), David Manis (Captain Brice, RN) and Haviland Morris (Chloe). This production won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and was nominated for the 1995 Tony Award for Best Play, losing to Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!.As a Stoppard fan attending a later performance, I had long admired him (who hadn’t?) for the intelligence and wit that deeply infused his introductory Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then accumulating works. But after the likes of, for instance, the superb Travesties (1974) and The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia was something else again. The workings of the heart that often went unexamined by the exceptional wordsmith were suddenly revealed, their emotions newly displayed. Stoppard leaped on these ideas with excitement and poured them into his play. As always he relished the technical language of specialist disciplines. “Noise,” for instance, is the scientist’s word for “error,” or “observational uncertainty.” It is “what scientists blame for the inaccuracy of their measurements.” Too much noise, in Arcadia, is what drives Valentine off course in his research. In the play, “noise” becomes a metaphor for extravagant and ridiculous behavior, especially that of the fame-seeking literary don Bernard, a very noisy character. “Trivial” means, for scientists, redundant information that doesn’t lead anywhere or proofs with no value. In the play, it is a telling word for what matters and what doesn’t. Personal relationships and the achievements of individuals, says Valentine, are “trivial” compared with the search for knowledge itself.

Thomasina and Septimus are interrupted by Mr. Chater, who barges into the study and demands a duel with Septimus. After Thomasina leaves the room, Chater says Septimus must pay for having sex with Mrs. Chater and insulting her honor. Chater demands a duel, but Septimus talks him down by appealing to his vanity as a writer. Septimus praises Chater's poetry, especially "The Couch of Eros," Chater's new book-length poem. Bernard is trying to prove that Byron was involved in a duel with poet in residence Ezra Chater, explaining Byron's hitherto unexplained two-year absence from England. In Scene 5, Bernard begins to read his paper about Chater and Byron to the family. The siblings and Hannah interrupt many times, and Valentine points out that Bernard didn’t include the statistical data that go against his hypothesis. Bernard, offended by the challenge to his big idea, makes an impassioned case that poetry is more important than science, and Valentine storms out. Bernard invites Hannah to London “for sex,” but she dismisses the idea. Bernard leaves, and Hannah reads Valentine some new information from a 19th-century article about the hermit—the hermit was obsessed with mathematical ideas about the fate of the universe which sound suspiciously like Thomasina’s.

Arcadia (1993) - Key takeaways

Arcadia is a highly literate, ingenious and intelligent theatrical entertainment, probably Stoppard's most accomplished play. But while one must respect the playwright's wit and erudition, it strikes me as the work of a brilliant impersonator rather than a dramatist with his own authentic voice. The play smells more of the lamp than of the musk of human experience." - Robert Brustein, The New Republic British dramatist Tom Stoppard, born in 1937, is author of such notable plays as Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.