Theatre Review: Is Paradise Lost in Arcadia?

The cast of Tom Stoppard’s tumultuous Arcadia Credit: courtesy of Austin Playhouse

In a word: chaos.

It’s a key theme in Tom Stoppard’s tumultuous Arcadia. It’s also what the play could easily spiral into, if not for grounding performances and strong direction. Austin Playhouse embraces the idea, encouraging the audience to look for the patterns within esoteric presentations. For their production, they introduce the concept of chaos theory early and often. The definition is in the program, in a pre-show display, easily pointed out as a clear inspiration for Stoppard’s work.

And yes, the epic performance occasionally veers toward chaos. Stoppard’s words are dense and cyclical, a perplexing mix of mathematics and biology, with healthy dashes of literary rivalry and painstaking historical work. It’s like someone threw a high school curriculum into a lidless blender, setting it on high speed and reveling in the carnage. It speeds through every topic imaginable, in ways that can’t possibly coalesce … and yet. They do. The itinerant threads weave together in a way that’s immensely satisfying.

The main two threads are two timelines in the aristocratic grounds of Sidley Park in England. The early 1800s storyline features the tutelage of young lady Thomasina Coverly (Alyssa Hurtado) under her caddish teacher, Septimus Hodge (Ismael Soto III). He’s invited an unseen school friend, Lord Byron, to visit the home. They become embroiled in various duels and dalliances, all against a backdrop of complete landscape renovation and a potential algebraic discovery by the young Thomasina. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, two Byronic scholars battle for academic discoveries at Sidley Park, while welcomed by the noble remnants of the Coverly family.

The performance challenge in Arcadia is making something natural out of the verbal chaos. The play’s main selling points are dreamy theoretical monologues about wildness and control in the natural world, and hilariously petty arguments between scholars. Both storylines succeed in those points, actors skillfully finding the humor and humanity in Stoppard’s words.

The play’s main selling points are dreamy theoretical monologues about wildness and control in the natural world, and hilariously petty arguments between scholars.

In the 1880s, Soto’s Hodge has far too much fun spinning verbal shackles around Ezra Chater’s (Ben Wolfe) cuckolded would-be poet and all his supporters. Meanwhile, the two 1990s scholars more than hold their own. The electricity generated between popular author Hannah Jarvis (Andrea Osborn) and professor Bernard Nightingale (Tobie Minor) could power a small town. And I don’t mean sexual electricity – although Nightingale wouldn’t mind – but the delight that comes with a blunt woman taking down a petty man. Minor’s perfect pomposity is quickly declawed by Osborn’s Jarvis. Their repartee definitely provides the most overt humor in the play, and it’s an arresting onstage dynamic.

Losing oneself in the unspooling of “iterative algorithms” and the “deterministic universe” is less immediately accessible. But for those who follow along it’s infinitely worth it. That’s where the stakes lie, setting up the Act II payoff. Besides, there’s something to be said in previously prickly characters performing quiet admiration. It’s nice to see the arrogant Hodge humbly engage and encourage Thomasina’s futuristic mathematical proofs. And when Coverly descendant Valentine (Joseph Garlock), a computer programmer and scientist, discusses the possibilities in Newtonian-style algorithms, Osborn shows aching softness in Jarvis’ pure appreciation.

So the actors carry on to the final scenes where the two storylines simultaneously converge. That’s where the genius of Lara Toner Haddock’s direction shines. The timelines seamlessly intertwine, differing characters entering through doors or sitting at tables, even fashion intermixing thanks to a modern-day costumed garden party. Subtle lighting (under designer Mark Novick) signals which era takes over the action, slightly different shades accompanying the actors. Watching the dialogue cues and stories play out in these final moments is sweet payoff, an overwhelming endcap to the performance as a whole.

Stoppard holds two theories in tense conversation throughout the play: natural world as cyclical, and natural world as a merciless slog toward obsolescence. Ultimately, he posits, why not both? Here, kicking off their 25th season, Austin Playhouse churns out their own version of a Stoppard-esque script. Arcadia opened their second season decades ago. Lara Toner Haddock and Barry Miller performed in that play, as Thomasina and the butler Jellaby, respectively. They both return as director and production stage manager (and in Haddock’s case, onstage in the more mature role of Lady Croom). Don Toner directed the 2001 version, and here consults. They are all contributing their own iteration to the Playhouse algorithm. Yes, someday the company will close, hopefully hundreds of years down the road, as everything dies. But for now? It’s a privilege to witness their progressions.