Word: sidley
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...numbered scenes in Arcadia are set at an English country manor in the early nineteenth century. The even-numbered scenes take place in the present at the same estate, Sidley Park, where bickering historians attempt to reconstruct the story of what happened in the other scenes. Arcadia is an extended rumination on love, sex, history and entropy that revolves around discussions of Fermat's Last Theorem, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, iterated algorithms, Byron's poetry and the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in England. That Arcadia is not exactly an accessible work did not bother the audience...
...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...
...past. Robertson and Arnold are excellent in their exchanges with each other; they recognize the extreme dryness of Stoppard's wit and construct their characters accordingly. Geordie Broadwater '04 is also outstanding in these scenes as Valentine Coverly, a member of the family that still lives at Sidley Park. Broadwater is weighted with many of the monologues in which Stoppard attempts to give five-minute explanations of chaos theory and quantum physics, but he manages them adroitly, maintaining a constant command of his words and showing a fine sense of timing...
...young pupil, with whom he gradually falls in love. It is touching to see Hodge become awkward and fumble for words as he is increasingly undone by his teenage student. But Guest seems to neglect that the amorous Hodge has also seduced most of the adult women at Sidley Park, and he shows only glimpses of the grown-up suaveness that he should have in order to have done...