Arcadia at St Mary’s
Performances on Thursday 29th and Friday 30th April, 2004
Tickets available from the School Office (01223 353253)
"This is a brilliant, brilliant play. A play of ideas, of consummate theatricality, of sophisticated entertainment and of heartache for time never to be regained." Sunday Times
Each year the Drama Department tries to put on a Junior School or School Play that breaks new ground. This year we have decided to stage Tom Stoppard's masterpiece, 'Arcadia', which received the glowing Sunday Times review you can see at the top of the page when it was first performed in 1993.
So why the website?
The reason our Lower Sixth Theatre Studies students have written this website is because the play makes demands on the audience. The audience, you may or may not be glad to know, has some hard thinking to do while watching this play. Stoppard will be asking you to come to terms with Chaos Theory and Romanticism, Fermat's Last Theorem and Garden History, love and madness.
But don't panic: it is worth it! You don't need a PhD to understand the humour (and there is plenty of humour in the play) and what you could do with knowing is all here in our website.
However, if you need further encouragement, let me leave you with the words of The Daily Telegraph theatre critic: "I have never left a new play more convinced that I'd just witnessed a masterpiece."
Arcadia?
The play derives its title from a famous Poussin painting: 'The Shepherds of Arcadia'. In this painting the men are gathered around a tomb on which are written the words: 'Et in Arcadia ego'.
Now what does this mean?
The Latin seems simple enough: 'Here am I in Arcadia,' as Lady Croom translates the words in the play. Or 'This is heaven' if you would like a more colloquial rendition.
Why then the tomb?
What Thomasina Coverly, another of the characters, realises is that 'Et in Arcadia ego' could also mean, 'Even in Arcadia, there am I.'
And who is speaking?
Death himself. Death was lurking even in the glorious landscapes painted by Poussin.
Stoppard makes use of this textual ambiguity in his play which, in one sense, is a good old-fashioned murder mystery. Even in the English Arcadia we see on stage there is death. However, what we're not sure about, at first, is who dies, if anyone. In 'The Real Inspector Hound', another Stoppard murder mystery, the dead body is on stage all the way through the play. In 'Arcadia' death lurks in the wings.
In another sense, though, the play is about people in paradise. It deals with love and sex and beautiful gardens (not necessarily in that order). And all the time it asks questions. What is Arcadia and how can we find it?
With the help of our website, and our production, we hope you will begin to find the answer.