Stoppard's great Arcadia comes to Bermuda

FRIDAY, JUNE 29: It has been hailed by critics as one of the greatest plays of our age and now Sir Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is coming to the Bermuda stage. 

The Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society has given Toronto-born Terry Tweed the momentous task of directing the masterpiece — one of her favourite plays by one of her all time favourite playwrights. 

Tweed, who was last on the island three years ago to direct Missing Celia Rose, has had a long career in theatre as an actor, director and teacher. She admits that Arcadia is one of the more challenging plays she has directed but suggested it to BMDS because it is so close to her heart.

“I love Stoppard,” she told the Bermuda Sun.

“He is probably one of the cleverest and most skilled playwrights, and from a dramaturgical point of view, Arcadia is a gorgeous piece of construction. I would probably agree that this is his greatest work. I think it is possibly a great play — it’s way up there somewhere,” she motions towards the sky.

Arcadia is set in two time periods, the early 1800s and the present day, and the play switches between the two. The characters of the present are tasked with solving the circumstances surrounding a death in the past.

While it is considered a highly intellectual work, it deals with basic human conditions such as love, relationships, sex and death.

At its core, Arcadia explores the nature of truth and history, the conflict between the Classical and Romantic eras, mathematics and the chaos theory, and ultimately, love.

 “It reminds me of (Sir Bernard) Shaw in that he is interested in exploring ideas, issues, dilemmas and problems — both of them use language to get at that,” explains Tweed.

“But the characters will only be successful in as far as you are passionate about them and that there are relationships involved — otherwise they just become a bunch of talking heads and you don’t care.

“You have to deal with the ideas — you can’t ignore them because that is the core of the play — but the heart of the play is the people and they have to find their personal connection to those arguments that make them important to them.

“It’s got to matter because if it doesn’t matter to them, it sure as hell isn’t going to matter to you.”

The original play premiered at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain in 1993 and opened on Broadway two years later. In London, it won the prestigious Oliver Award for Best Play and in the States it received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

Many of the actors chosen to perform in this production are skilled and well recognized in the Bermuda arena. Jo Shane is to play Lady Croom who carries on affairs with, no less than, Lord Byron, James Birch tackles heart-strung professor Septimus Hodge, Mike Jones is the distinguished butler Jellaby and Thomasina is Septimus’s impetuous genius pupil. In the modern day scenes, Will Kempe takes on don Bernard Nightingale and Deborah Pharoah-Williams is the investigating author Hannah Jarvis.

Tweed openly admits that the cast have had their work cut out for them grappling with this masterful script.

“People love Stoppard because of his language but to speak that stuff is difficult, it takes huge control but it is such a joy to get that stuff off your tongue. We have been wrestling the script to the ground, it’s a tough one but everyone is pleased to be working on it. The journey is worth it and the struggle is worth it.”

Tweed says she also loves the theatrical surprises that Stoppard throws into his plays. In Arcadia for instance, the characters from the past and present return to a large table where much of the action takes place, yet as the time periods switch, the props, such as the books, the tortoise, coffee mugs, quills and laptops, remain next to each other in a blurring of past and present.  

“I just love his mind and his theatricality — it’s extraordinary. He’s daring — he takes huge risks in his plays theatrically, you are always surprised.”

Tweed reiterates caution about paying too much attention to some of the complex ideas discussed in the play believing it might discourage audiences.

It’s true that Stoppard, who was knighted in 1997, is known to explore subjects that many dramatists would shirk from such as metaphysics, quantum mechanics and moral philosophy. But, as the British Council — literature explains: “Behind the intellectual high jinx there lurks an often passionate humanist whose writing betrays an increasing concern both with the abuse of freedom and the nature of love.”

Tweed adds: “Sex, literature, life and death — that’s what it’s all about. It’s about those things but it is also a detective story and it’s a play in which the audience always knows more than the characters.

“He uses science and he uses literature but if you start looking at just that it becomes boring — you might as well go to the library or read an essay.

“ How do you connect and understand compassion, about love, about generosity of spirit and hatred and jealousy? That’s why we go to the theatre because you go and learn about yourself and your fellow human beings and maybe you won’t make some of the same mistakes. If it isn’t coated in humanness then it’s not a play.”

• Arcadia runs at Daylesford Theatre from July 5 to July 14 with no performances on July 8 or July 9.