19:45, Tue 17th – Sat 21st May 2011 at ADC Theatre
Easter Week 3
CUADC is excited to bring this intellectual, romantic, tragic and comic rollercoaster to the ADC stage. Skipping between genres and between centuries, Arcadia explores the irreversibility of time, the conflict between Classicism and Romanticism, the struggle between chaos and determinism, the difficulty of ascribing historical certainty, rules and numbers to love, mathematics, physics, architecture, nihilism, lust, madness.... No amount of words can begin to capture the brilliance of Stoppard’s masterpiece that, aside from anything else, has the most captivating and moving story, and a rich array of brilliant characters.
One room. Two time periods.
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The magnificent drawing room of a Derbyshire country house. The precocious 13-year-old, Lady Thomasina, is studying with her tutor. The infamous Lord Byron is an unseen house-guest looming offstage. As the people around her have affairs, threaten duels, shoot rabbits, and mutate the surrounding landscape into a ‘picturesque’ Gothic fantasy land, she begins to grow up. But her age never manages to catch up with her extraordinary mathematical genius.
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The same room. Hannah, a garden historian, is investigating the past of the grounds. Bernard, a professor, is there to explore the sordid scandal involving Lord Byron that took place at Sidley two centuries ago. With the help of the current inhabitants of the house, they become consumed in the history of Sidley. As their investigations, discoveries and arguments unfold, the truth about Thomasina’s childhood at Sidley is ingeniously untangled, while past and present begin to intertwine with the same grace as her equations.