By Tom Stoppard
Rhynsburger Theatre – University of Missouri – Columbia, MO – November 11-18, 2010
Director: Kevin Brown
Costume Design: Kerri S. Packard
Set and Lighting Design: R. Dean Packard
Sound Design: Mark Walsh
Director’s Notes:
In approaching this play as a director, it would be tempting to focus on the intellectual aspects. We learn about the second law of thermodynamics: the tendency of hot and cold bodies to exchange heat and move towards an even temperature. We hear about chaos theory, also referred to as “the butterfly effect,” in which small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes, rendering prediction impossible. We encounter the debate between free will and determinism, the argument over whether or not human beings are free to choose our own lot or if we are all doomed to succumb to the forces of fate.
I would, in fact, argue that the math, the science, and the philosophical meanderings of the play turn out to be merely background noise, distractions through which one must listen to hear the play’s true meaning. All of these intellectual acrobatics can be more easily understood as metaphors that resonate with the deep structure of the play: the chaos that ensues from the confusion of sex and love, of life and death.
“Arcadia” is, perhaps, the only play that I know of in which the inciting incident of the play takes place after the action of the play itself. Tom Stoppard has constructed a play in which the action of the plot progresses simultaneously along two parallel, and eventually intersecting, timelines. Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say that the inciting incident is an event that occurs after the first timeline ends and before the second timeline begins.
In the first timeline, occurring in the early 1800s, we find a precocious young student (Thomasina Coverly) taking lessons from her learned tutor (Septimus Hodge). Thomasina is the daughter of Lady Croom, a member of the British aristocracy who is known for her forward thinking and the fascinating personalities who come to visit her country estate. Among her guests is the young Lord Byron, who is a character in the play who never appears on stage.
In the second timeline, which takes place in the present day, we find two young scholars (Hannah Jarvis and Bernard Nightingale) who have come to the Croom estate – the same location as the setting of the first timeline – to investigate their own scholarly undertakings. Hannah is looking for information about a mysterious hermit who lived on the estate for many years. Bernard is a Byron scholar who is trying to dig up information about a duel that supposedly took place there.
Eventually, the two time-lines collide, and fireworks ensue. Our modern-day scholars – piece-by-piece, clue-by-clue -put together a puzzle left behind by the former residents of the estate. The result is the genius of Stoppard’s play.