Arcadia review – love, gardening and Euclidian geometry collide in Tom Stoppard’s cosmic masterpiece

2026-02-05 - 14:25

Old Vic, London Stuffed with knowledge and often regarded as the playwright’s finest work, this drama’s sheer cleverness gleams in an exuberant production When Tom Stoppard was asked what this play was about, just as it streaked its meteoric path from London to New York in the 1990s, he called it a drama of romance, mathematics, landscape gardening and Byron. It doesn’t quite cover it. Often regarded as his finest, Arcadia is about life, the universe and everything, to borrow a phrase. It takes place in a single room, across time, alternately filled with a 19th-century past and a parallel setting in the 1980s. Director Carrie Cracknell suggests these worlds are a hair’s-breath away from an encounter, virtually brushing past each other as they go. It opens with teenage prodigy Thomasina Coverly (Isis Hainsworth) conversing amicably with her tutor Septimus Hodge (Seamus Dillane). The ping-pong of their dialogue is amusing but heartfelt. The mysteries of the world that Thomasina seeks to solve through algebraic equation are accompanied by a slow flirtation between them and the romance that grows is tender, sparky and moving. Continue reading...