Shaw Festival
Through September 7
ARCADIA Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival
The true genius is someone who comes up with something truly new.
That genius can be like Charles Babbage whose early computer couldn't be built in his day because the machine tool industry couldn't handle the tolerances.
That's what Tom Stoppard's “Arcadia” is about, two women kept in their place.
Activity shifts back and forth across two centuries in the glass-walled garden room of the country home of a great noble family.
As the play goes along, we realize Thomasina Coverly (Kate Besworth) is being tutored at home while her brother goes to Eton.
Looking back across the centuries, a collateral descendant and computer maven, Valentine Coverly (Martin Happer) looks at her long-forgotten papers and realizes how smart she was.
His girlfriend, Hannah (Diana Donnelly), doesn't understand the computer theory Thomasina was working on is the same data analysis Hannah is working on.
She also has to deal with an insufferable academic who uses information from the house to construct a paper on Lord Byron...some true...some mystery...a lot of supposition.
He makes the London papers with a splash only to get caught with Chloe Coverly (Harveen Sandhu) in the gazebo and have Hannah find the information to ruin him.
Stoppard's play is a mix of the naïve, the adulterous, the venal, the ambitious and the loyal servant (Michael Ball).
At the core is science and genius, especially that of Thomasina who is so bright but dumb about her intuitive understanding of data and thermodynamics that she doesn't understand and no one else can understand.
Only when scientist and mathematician Valentine digs into the old old papers does he understand her genius.
Many old homes in Britain have centuries of paper still being mined by historian as is Sidley Park here.
This isn't a play for everyone, but it is fascinating for its probing of science and genius.
It's also a look at the cutthroat, no-holds-barred world of academia in which Bernard Nightingale (Patrick McManus) wants to rise, presumably to Oxford or Cambridge.
It's a wonderful performance of a man more interested in appearances than fact, surrounded by people who are interested in fact and truth.
It would make a wonderful series of article and blog posts in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In a sense, this is a theatrical version of Clue, with the butler monitoring.
“Arcadia” is a fascinating show although you have to be wide awake to follow what's going on because Stoppard has always been a cerebral writer and this play doubles down on that in snaking its way through time and the Coverlys.
The show has a wonderful set from Sue LePage and fine direction from Eda Holmes, along with strong performances from Besworth, Powell, Donnelly, Happer and Sanjay Talwar's Captain Brice, RN.
See it.
A.W.
© Copyright 2023 - Speakupwny.com
hosted by Online Media, Inc
Buffalo Web Design and Web Hosting
Top of Page
