Arcadia On Broadway: Now And Then

By Benjamin Nockles

Tickets are now available through June 19 for a limited engagement of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, which has arrived on Broadway from the West End. Previews will begin on February 26 while opening night is scheduled for March 17.

An enthusiastic cast at a recent press meet and greet sung praises for both director David Leveaux and Stoppard's craftsmanship. David Turner, who plays Ezra Chater describes the feeling as "a great creative ferment. David Leveaux creates an atmosphere […] where everyone feels like we're clicking and your creative contributions feel really acknowledged and integrated, it's great."

Broadway Show: Arcadia

"David Leveaux is a terrific director and just has a great sense of fun about him," says actor Glenn Fleshler (Captain Brice.) "We're all just trying to chisel away at the play just to get it right."

Leveaux regards Stoppard's writing as being "of an emotional variety, depth and range that almost no one can compete with when he's writing at this level."

you get your money's worth in a million different ways if you come and see this play

Arcadia, which is actually returning to Broadway after having premiered there in 1995, is one of seventeen of Stoppard's shows to hit the Great White Way. The Coast of Utopia, which ran in 2006, won 10 Tony awards, the most of any Broadway play.

Arcadia simultaneously tells two stories separated by a gap of nearly two hundred years. Bel Powley plays an inquisitive student under the tutelage of Septimus Hodge, played by Tom Riley, amidst an unfolding drama that takes place at a country house in Derbyshire. At present day, Hannah Jarvis is a researcher portrayed by Lia Wiliams who is investigating the history behind the house while on a fact–finding mission about a hermit who was said to live there.

The relationships between the twelve characters of the play, separated by generations yet intertwined by timeless human themes, are "exquisite," according to Williams. "The characters are just so exciting to watch because [Stoppard has] written leading roles for most of his characters."

Raul Esparza, who plays the modern character Valentine Coverly, calls the play "one of the most beautiful plays to have been written about falling in love. […] There's a little bit of a thriller element trying to figure out what happened in the past with the people in the present."

The disconnected timeline between the two plots is perhaps the most outstanding quality adding to the play's uniqueness. Billy Crudup, an original cast member (as Septimus Hodge) who now plays Bernard Nightingale says that because the past and present casts never directly interact, "it's like doing a different play." In fact, there is one scene towards the end when both casts cohabit the same room at different time periods in ghost–like fashion.

Noah Robbins is the only actor playing two roles (Augustus Coverly/Gus Coverly) and tying both the past and the present together. Among many other physical constants such as the set and the props, Robbins acts as a reference point for the audience to draw parallels between the separate stories. "There are times when the audience knows more than the characters," says Robbins. "[…] Usually you have to figure it out for yourself and you do have to figure a lot out for yourself but it's fun to be ahead of the game and behind the game simultaneously."

"It's thrilling to behold," declares Crudup, "so I think you get your money's worth in a million different ways if you come and see this play."