Between lunch and dinner with various people at various places, the first day of my four day weekend was spent alone at a play – none other than Stoppard’s Arcadia.
I think this is the play that, when I finished reading it, I felt the greatest need to watch. Usually I’m quite content to have just the words on the page, but this time I felt something passed me by in the reading, something was lacking – and at the same time it was too much for me to fully grasp in one reading. It seems I have finally gotten my wish, and am not at all disappointed.
Beginning at 2pm – rather, 1:30 – I was left with the rather awkward business of deciding when to enter. But I went with a safe 15 minutes prior, and seated myself. The stage was well-lit: a wooden floor, rectangular dining table with a scattering of objects and papers, and four seats around it. In the background were clean white french windows, and a door to the outside or an adjacent room. Audience seating was, incidentally, also well-arranged; there was no bad seat in the house. Read the program, try to remember a little about the play I read so many years ago. Overhear a man elucidating the second law of thermodynamics to his companions. Lights dim, cue transition music. So it begins.
Just over three and a half hours later, I am reminded in full of how much and why I adored this play. Touching upon themes of entropy, human relationships, the nature of time, chaos theory, determinism and much more, there is far too much to take in all at once. Yet it never feels overwhelming in the slightest. Some may criticize it as too highbrow or pretentious, as if theatergoers should first study up on thermodynamics or the life of Byron – but I found it was all accessibly done and no such thing is required, though perhaps I speak with too much personal bias. Stoppard keeps dialogue witty (not necessarily steering away from low humor, either) and the analogies apt and tractable, and this production keeps the tone surprisingly light for the majority. And as far as the science that’s hard to understand – so it is in reality; we are not meant to understand it all anyway.
The scenes alternate between early 19th century and the present day, and in these different periods we see different (albeit related) plots and characters coming and going through the room – but the objects placed on the table remain. And though two ingredients won’t unstir themselves and cold tea won’t get hot, the actions of the past are mirrored in those of the future, not exactly but in strikingly similar ways. For such is human nature.
Oftentimes, the very things characters imagine will hold future importance are forever lost; those that they do absentmindedly or routinely, the least expected things, are the ones that stick around. This inherent unpredictability of how the one-way street of time affects, creates destroys, this entropy of ignorance percolates through the play. The stumbling academics try to piece together the lives of the Sidley Park residents, or mathematically model the populations of grouse some centuries ago. But the clues left to them are so incomplete in nature that they may only guess blindly, sometimes exactly wrongly, at the truth. But though there are many missteps along the way, Stoppard optimistically ends with their having reached a correct conclusion. And though it may not be the happiest ending for everyone, it is indeed a touching one.
On a different (tangential? ) note: writing about science in literature is a most difficult thing. The matter is often either simple enough to come across as a cheesy analogy, or oversimplified to the point of cringeworthy in its wrongness. Its inclusion can feel shoehorned in, or the situations needed to make the analogy overly contrived. Yet Stoppard achieves a most perfect balance. When one paraphrases another’s scientific explanation or tries to understand whether they are right or not, oftentimes the answer is “No – well…kind of” – it is not perfectly exact. Though the science may be, human understanding is not. Whether this is to do with the still-uncertain nature of these topics and their inherent complications/complexity, or the uncertainty the characters themselves display in their comprehension (or lack thereof) of the concepts – it all feels very right.
But it is not sterilely scientific either — in fact, far from it. It is the very collaboration between science and the humanities that drives their investigations to a conclusion. Though the disciplines may disagree, their cooperation is invaluable. And neither, as they show, is any more meaningful than the other – they are different, but ultimately all is moot on a philosophical level – we must, of course, choose the things that have meaning to us, and pursue them. Human relationships and personal development feature prominently; according to Chloe, in fact, they drive everything.
Kira Patterson as Thomisina made for a convincing, energetic and at times over-the-top 13=year=old, full of witticism and keen observations, confident in a way only a person of her age can be. Will Madden’s Septimus was charming and polite, the very picture of the tutor as I’d have imagined. The others were no less – from Muirhead’s elegant Lady Croom to MacDonald’s blustering arrogant (yet not beyond sympathy) Mr. Nightingale – down to Tank the turtle’s appearance as Lightning and Plautus. Set design matched Stoppard’s thorough descriptions, the costumes were fine, the diegetic lighting was well done – yeah, I’m not much of a reviewer of productions, ne? After all, the play’s the thing –
I suppose I read it originally with a milder, more serious tone – that is, I didn’t inject so much emotion or interpretation into the lines. But I suppose that’s what going to the theater is all about. I’m glad I read the play first and indeed still prefer it to the watching, but it was very nice indeed to have it all put so effortlessly before me. Though I fear it may affect my readings of the play forever, and the only way to remedy that might to be see a different adaptation/interpretation. But really, my one regret about this all is that someone made me talk to them about this before I got to contemplate or write a bit on my own first. I rather prefer when the thoughts get to grow and increase until I let them out all at once. Oh well. Also, I think I’ll be taking the majority of this for my English paper, so forgive the slightly different style/voice adapted for that purpose.