University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 13Aug 22

 

Sir Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia has been classified as one of the great contemporary plays of the English language. Indeed, now that it is over thirty years old, one looks upon it in this latter era of short and sweet and scaled-down theatre as one of the wordiest and most complex of popular contemporary plays being, as it is, presented as a contemporaneous duopoly of time.

 

In the same old English house there exist characters from 1809 hashing out the fine points of mathematics, landscape gardening and literature interspersed with characters of 1993 doing much the same retrospectively. The audience must pay close attention to the two periods and the assorted concepts and opinions as must the actors master a highly complex and prolix script.

It’s not a play for the faint-of-heart.

 

But UATG is far from faint-hearted. It braves works of erudition and packs its little theatre in so doing. For Arcadia, Matthew Chapman has stepped away from acting to take on the role of a solo director for the first time. It is a sterling start.

 

This production rockets along on a sleek and simple one-table set against a pleasant pale blue facade which represents the grand old Sidley Park mansion in Dorset. A subtle festoon of flowers signifies its verdant setting; a great landscaped garden which is subject to the aesthetic upheaval of the latest trends in landscape gardening. This is just one of the fascinating themes which threads through the plot, introducing the character of Noakes (Rohan Cassidy), the Capability Brown of the moment, whose “modernisation” of the glorious formal vista landscape seeks to make, if wild and dense, a suitable abode for a hermit. Thomasina Coverly, (Pari Nehvi) teenage daughter of the house and under the tuition of the handsome Septimus Hodge (Robert Baulderstone) is fascinated by this possibility and draws a hermit into the landscape architect’s sketch where it remains for the misinformation of future historians. They are the other aspect of the play and very ably embodied indeed.

 

Two time periods are enacted, first with clever young Thomasina challenging her tutor with concepts of physics beginning with why, once stirred, jam cannot be unstirred from rice pudding. Subjects such as determinism, iteration and chaos theory wind around sex education, gardening and poetry, salient since the second-rate poet Ezra Chater (Maxwell Whigham) is a regular guest in the house and the unseen presence of Lord Byron lingers everywhere, he having been a friend of tutor Septimus.

 

Also in the 19th Century household is the chatelaine, Lady Croom, (Kate Anolak), a very firm and sensible Matriarch with a wee flirtatious edge. It is a big and busy household and this is a big and busy play.

 

And in come the contemporaries, at the same table at Sidley Park, hashing over the history. There’s Hannah Jarvis (Alison Scharber) and Valentine Coverly (Guy Henderson) and, most significantly, Bernard Nightingale, the Oxford don who masquerades under the alternative avian name of Peacock, and who is obsessing on Lord Byron theories. John Rosen makes a delicious meal of this character.

 

The transitions between the present and the past slip to and fro very nicely with the occasional moveable prop and, of course, changing period costumes. All of which, importantly, is illuminated by the excellent Stephen Dean, late of the beloved Bakehouse Theatre.

 

Rebecca Kemp pops into the production credits as an “intimacy co-ordinator” which is very on-trend but de trop when the intimacies in this play, while integral, also are hardly lusty or intimate. There’s also Nicholas Clippingdale in the credits as “mathematics advisor”; it seems more logical, albeit oddly obscure. As is the need for a “classics advisor”. ’Tis a much-advised production.

 

One wonders what the playwright might be making of these further offstage loads to a production team when, already, the play calls for a large cast and some very niftily co-ordinated switchings of time and players.

 

Indeed, Arcadia is an ambitions production which embraces a fecund swathe of academic erudition, ideal perhaps in a university context. 

It is also a play inclusive of seasoned and young players in its cast, which it the perfect combination in an educational environment - and which worked so very well in the balance of performances, not always even, but not bad at all.

 

For those interested in the rules of physics, there is some grist to an ancient mill. For those caring about the egocentric bastardry of landscape gardeners, there is an ongoing agenda over which to fume.

 

For those seeking an intellectually busy night of theatre, here it is.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 13 to 21 Aug

Where: Little Theatre

Bookings: trybooking.com