Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia starts with a stunningly blunt question, remarkable not for its tawdry nature but for the underlying mystery it presents.
It is posed by Thomasina Coverly (Grace Theobald) to her tutor, Septimus Hodge (Luke Myers). The precocious and wildly curious 13-year-old girl asks him, with genuinely devious curiosity, “What is carnal embrace?”
The question in the Pacific Conservatory Theatre’s (PCPA) latest production sends the plot into a whirling warp, bouncing the play between the year 1809 and the present day, as the audience slowly begins to piece together a mystery of sorts. It’s not the end result of that mystery, but rather the nature of its pursuit that makes Arcadia so memorable.
In the 1800s, the Crooms, led by Lady Croom (Polly Firestone Walker), decide to renovate the gardens at their estate in pastoral Derbyshire, England. They are updating from the Arcadian style to a Gothic style. Some of the mystery of the play surrounds the fate of Ezra Chater, a languishing poet of mediocre talents. In scenes set in a present day timeline, Bernard Nightingale (George Walker) furiously obsesses over his theory that Chater was killed by the acclaimed poet Lord George Gordon Byron. Also in the same present day is Hannah Jarvis (Amani Dorn), a writer firmly rooted in intellectual pursuits who challenges Nightingale’s high flying leaps to conclusions.
It would be virtually impossible to succinctly explain what Stoppard’s award-winning play is purely about. The play is a meditation of knowledge and its different forms and the way it consumes those who seek it. Knowledge exists in Stoppard’s play as an intellectual pursuit, a quest for filling the mind with satisfactory information that blossoms into a greater meaning of purpose. But there also exists within Stoppard’s far-reaching world a thirst for the knowledge of love. It is there in the instant Thomasina posits her question, posed to her tutor, between bouts of discourse on intellectual matters such as math.
These two intertwined stories, set more than a hundred years apart, are most obviously connected by their physical space. The play takes place in one uniform location, yet the bond between plotlines isn’t necessarily a material one. Stoppard’s lead characters each bear an oftentimes cumbersome desire for a knowledge that is just always beyond their grasp. In each corresponding time period, a bigger truth is revealed, one that seems utterly unavoidable as all the pieces line up.
If Stoppard is anything, he is deeply devoted to the rigors of suppositional dialogue. The play is peppered with clever and funny lines that break up the long bouts of densely packed pronouncements and exchanges. Stoppard is deft at handing audiences a lot of material to unpack with moments of comedic whimsy.
It’s a challenging and bold move to tackle such material at PCPA and the cast and crew rise to the task. Theobald is a tightly wound package of spark and inventiveness, holding back on just the right moments of intrigue and coy curiosity. Her Thomasina is part chanteuse and part Marie Curie, a girl becoming something more than the constraints of her gender or social status. The way she slips past Septimus in means of intellectual ability (and the way he slowly begins to see it) is a devastating undertaking, and Theobald wields the moment gracefully.
The interplay between Walker and Dorn is equally dynamic as one pushes the other, motivated again by a lust for knowledge. Walker could teach a masterclass in character acting; his Nightingale evolves ever so slightly from the foppish manner in which Stoppard initially depicts him. Dorn channel’s Hannah’s pursuit of the Sidley Hermit into something eerily undefinable, hurling the audience into a conclusion that bridges the gap between both timelines.
Dorn has a natural grace on the stage which allows her to seem more free from some of the heavier dialogue that peppers her scenes. I enjoyed how she roots Hannah not just in her intellectual pursuits, a rather two-dimensional depiction of a modern woman, but in her pragmatic view of life and its directions. Paired with Walker, she snaps in every scene and brings a strong balance to the two timelines.
The crew does a good job moving the solitary set along in its journey across time. I half-expected the table to be repurposed with different set pieces, but the deliberate choice to let things remain as they were from scene to scene works by reminding the audience of just how accessible the past is. Scholars and researchers like Jarvis and Nightingale bury the past in a fortress of inaccessibility, when in truth the answers lie right in front of their faces. If only they would bother to stop and look.
I would definitely regret not mentioning one of the best performances I’ve seen on stage at the Marian Theater. Tank the Turtle makes a resplendent debut, standing out like a sparkling star as he slowly inches his way across the table shared by Septimus and Thomasina and later Nightingale and Jarvis. Plautus (as he is called in the earlier time period) becomes Lightning in the present day, a vibrant symbol for just how easy it is to pierce the seemingly impenetrable boundary between the past and the present. Tank plays a uniquely important role in the production, and new to the stage, I have to say I was quite blown away by this young actor new to the stage. I was also terrified he would crawl to the edge of the table and fall off, but apparently turtles are a lot more understanding of the laws of gravity than I was previously led to believe.
While Stoppard’s play may not be easy to immediately define, it is one that is dazzling to present. PCPA’s actors do much of the heavy lifting in taking Arcadia from a place of didactic exploration to a more humanistic expression of the true passions of our intellectual pursuits.
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose is doing the time warp again. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 6, 2018.