Word: septimus
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...Septimus Hodge says, “When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore.” Every meaning is properly discovered by a thoughtful performance of “Arcadia,” Tom Stoppard’s comedic masterpiece, which will run at the Loeb Ex through April 12. The play deals with topics as large as the uncertainty of history, determinism, and entropy, but the tension between order and disorder in the play does not extend to this crisp production.The themes and structure...
...Bernard M. Septimus, Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History and Sephardic Civilization...
...theater itself offers an ideal setting for the production. Janie Howland's design is such that the Agassiz Theater looks like an extension of her set, which depicts a sitting room in the Sidley Park manor house. In the 19th-century scenes, 23-year-old tutor Septimus Hodge (Austin Guest '04) instructs 13-year-old Thomasina Coverly (Sarah Thomas '04), the precocious daughter of Lord and Lady Croom, the aristocrats who own Sidley Park. Jana Howland's costume design evokes the complexity of period dress through relatively simple outfits, which seem credible but not overwrought. In the present-day scenes...
...right, in the alternating scenes another, modern-day drama is underway in the same house. Two academics, Hannah Jarvis (Kandis Chappell) and Bernard Nightingale (Terence Caza), are busy combing through the library looking for evidence about why Byron left England in such a god-awful hurry, how the tutor Septimus may have been involved, the identity of the rent-a-hermit, and who, exactly, Ezra Chater was. As they work through these various literary-historical mysteries, they also flirt with the waspish residents of the house, Valentine and Chloe Coverly (Willis Sparks and Annika Peterson). Oh, and a mute...
...principal actors handle their roles with plenty of energy, and keep this intricate vessel moving smoothly forward. Conner Trinneer plays Septimus with a charming cockiness, blended with tenderness for his 13-year-old charge, and the tutor becomes the most sympathetic figure in the play, despite his extensive philandering. Gretchen Cleevely plays the wise child with a sort of Margaret O'Brien chirpiness, which is distracting, but not excessively so; more troubling are the scenes toward the end of the play, which seem to propose the 16-year-old Thomasina as a potential sexual partner for her adult tutor. Granted...