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Arcadia - Overview
written by Tom stoppard
directed by Kristin Hughes
performed August 5-7, 2004

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia takes the audience back and forth through time, illuminating the mysteries of mathematics, Romantic poetry, the second law of thermodynamics and chaos theory, as well as the chaos of the human heart and the "attraction that Newton left out".

In 1809 at Sidley Park, the orderly classicism of Lady Croom's Capability Brown grounds is being turned into picturesque romantic chaos under the direction of her new landscape gardener. In a room overlooking the garden's renovation, Lady Croom's adolescent daughter, Thomasina Coverly, discusses Fermat's theorem, Newtonian physics, and the definition of carnal embrace with her tutor Septimus Hodge. They are interrupted by, among others, the amorous Lady Croom and Ezra Chater, a cuckold and minor poet, determined on satisfaction. 195 years later, in the same room, a group of modern day academics try with some difficulty to unravel the events of 1809.



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