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The Arcadia
Program
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The Arcadia
Program
|
The Cast
(in order of
appearance)
| Thomasina Coverly | Colleen MacIsaac |
| Septimus Hodge | Mike Sidney |
| Plautus / Lightning | Cosmo the Turtle |
| Jellaby | George Howie |
| Ezra Chater | Robin McKittrick |
| Richard Noakes | David Sneddon |
| Lady Croom | Carmie Zahara |
| Captain Brice | Mike McPhee |
| Hannah Jarvis | Colleen Gillis |
| Chloe Coverly | Dawn M. White |
| Bernard Nightingale | Keith Morrison |
| Valentine Coverly | Ken MacLeod |
| Gus / Augustus Coverly | Phonse Walsh |
| Director | Rod Nicholls |
| Stage Manager | Jenn Gillespie |
| A.S.M. | Alicia Covey |
| Prompters | Lisa Spinney, Denisha Farrell, Jennifer Chisholm |
| Lighting Designer | Ken Heaton |
| Lighting Operator | Ursula Johnson |
| Set Designer | Burland Murphy |
| Sound | Blair Butler |
| Slide Engineer | Darren Fraser |
| Props Manager | Richie Wilcox |
| Props | Mary Dove, Greg Pynn |
| Costumes | Malabar / Cast & Crew |
| Dresser | Heather Oldford |
| Production Assistant | Anne Cordeau |
| Tech Support | Brian Boutilier |
Thank You
| Jeanne Matthews |
| Susan Gallop |
| Ark Antique Gallery |
| Mabou Gardens |
| Family and Friends |
Scene
One
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, April 1809
"Oh no, not the gazebo"
Scene
Two
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, Present Day
"Are
you looking into Byron or Chater?"
Scene
Three
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, April 1809
"One
does not aim at poetry with pistols"
Scene
Four
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, Present Day
"The
future is disorder"
**********************
Scene Five
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, Present Day
"Bernard's
reading us his lecture"
Scene
Six
Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April 1809
"Aren't
we saucy when our bags are packed"
Scene
Seven
Sidley
Park, Derbyshire, 1812 and Present Day
"Our
annual dressing up and general drunkenness"
What is Arcadia about? One can imagine a book cover blurb that says, with some accuracy, "Tom Stoppard displays his dazzling comic talent for word games and pure farce in dramatizing themes as diverse as romantic poetry, chaos theory and fashions in landscape gardening. A unique mix of art, sex and science." Yet such a summary overcomplicates a popular play that won London's Olivier Award for best play of 1993 and the New York Drama Critics Award for best play of 1995 when it was first performed. As Arcadia shifts from the early 19th to late 20th century, for instance, it is easy to realize that the basic question at the outset concerns who is sleeping with whom (and the dangerous consequences of getting caught in such activities). But what starts off as an investigation into an intriguing incident in Lord Byron's love life ends up as the story of a girl genius who loves the beautiful unpredictability of life. Although Stoppard has said that Arcadia is the "quiet play" he has always wanted to write, this story makes it the most passionate of his works. Arcadia, perhaps, is about the way different human beings face absolute loss and how some try to recover some of the significance of what has died in the world that lives on.
Arcadia
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