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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Henry Hitchings's rating
Reader rating
Dir: David Leveaux.
Cast: Samantha Bond, Nancy Carroll, Jessie Cave, Neil Pearson, Dan Stevens, Ed Stoppard
Description: Tom Stoppard's two-tier historical detective story, blurring past and present as an academic investigates events in a country house 180 years earlier. Starring Samantha Bond, Neil Pearson and Ed Stoppard.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square/Charing Cross 
Phone: 0870060 6623
Website: www.theambassadors.com/dukeofyorks
Engaging performances: Samantha Bond as historian Hannah and Neil Pearson as the odious Bernard
Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is that rare thing, a toothsome entertainment that also thrills us with a dozen strange thoughts before bedtime. Among its seductively odd propositions: algebra is sexy, the whole universe is destined to end up at room temperature, the missing works of Sophocles are likely to be recovered, a tortoise can make a good paperweight and carnal embrace is “the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef”. The play, in short, is a feast of ideas.
David Leveaux’s revival, the first in London since the play debuted at the National Theatre 16 years ago, shows the complexity of Stoppard’s work.
The germ of the drama is the image of a room that does not change between 1809 and the present: in the past it is home to Thomasina Coverly, a pert mathematical prodigy, and her tutor Septimus, a friend of Lord Byron, as well as the lousy erotic poet Ezra Chater and a covey of patrician wise-acres, while now it is the arena for a three-cornered contest between odious media don Bernard Nightingale, rational historian Hannah Jarvis and Valentine, Thomasina’s descendant and a rather earnest student of chaos theory. Stoppard expertly braids the tropes of country house comedy with some chewy metaphysical speculations.
Thomasina spots the incompleteness of Isaac Newton’s laws of physics, Bernard unearths what he believes to be a dirty secret in the life of Byron, and between these two poles of scientific wizardry and headline-grabbing pabulum lie subjects as disparate as the mathematics of the grouse population, horticultural fashion, the ways we fall in love and the viability of placing a newspaper advertisement to secure the services of a hermit.
The play is — if this synopsis leaves any doubt — curious, sophisticated and killingly funny. Leveaux’s production has an assured rhythm.
Hildegard Bechtler’s set is straightforwardly effective, and the performances are engaging. As Septimus, Dan Stevens oozes a sardonic sort of charm, while Samantha Bond’s Hannah is poised, and Nancy Carroll as Thomasina’s mother Lady Croom has a sharp allure.
Neil Pearson’s Bernard amuses — a whirlwind of inept sleuthing — and as Valentine the playwright’s son, Ed Stoppard, is twitchy, sensitive and watchable.
There are smart turns in the lesser roles, too (George Potts’s Chater especially enjoyable), and only Jessie Cave’s grating Thomasina disappoints —though she is touching at the play’s close. It is often alleged that Stoppard’s work is all head and no heart. Arcadia demonstrates that he is in fact a scholar of the emotions, as well as of thermodynamics and the byways of 19th-century literary squabbles. Leveaux’s revival confirms this is Stoppard’s finest play — highlighting its intellectual substance, and at the same time revelling both in its wit and in the tragic uncertainties of our quantum universe.
Until 12 September. Information 020 7432 4220
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I saw Arcadia yesterday and came back to this review which I'd read at the time to refresh my memory. I found it spot on. The play is indeed 'a feast of ideas' and you don't to be a scientist or a mathematician to appreciate the poignancy of life's transitoriness. In thiis play, time and characters change, but the setting remains the same, the only constant the presence of a tortoise used as paper weight. Bernard's sleuthing of Lord Byron's misdemeanours has added piquancy in the light of a recent TV series - the pointlessness of presuming to grasp the essence of another life at another time. A brilliant play and great production - well deserving of rave reviews.
- Marguerite, London ,UK
I have to confess that during the first act, following consumption of the Standard's 3 courses for £15 at Quaglino's, I found myself dropping off. However, the first scene of Act 2 is a theatrical tour-de-force and produces enough energy to sustain the play to its climax.
- Blue Baby, London
I am immensely surprised at the good reviews this play has received. As both a mathematics graduate with passion for science and a now drama student, I was desperately bored and appaled during this production.
The acting is over-the-top, unaffective and pretentious. Contrary to what is being mentioned in the above review, the only character (and actress) who had some emotional truth and innocence was the girl who played Thomassina.
The play is badly written. It sounds more like a juxtaposition of essays and ideas rather than drama that provokes and pushes it's characters through a journey. It lacks emotional depth, it lacks drama and the relationships between the characters are superficial. This play seems more like an effort to pretentiously impress and overwhelm the average member of audience with the complexity and volume of its ideas, but it ends up leaving any true thespian or even scientist, unfulfilled and tired. It lacks purpose, it lacks drive, it lacks passion and every attempt for its characters to create it, is fake and lacking any depth or real motivation.
- Margarita, London, UK
A fabulous revival of this amazing play. Almost all the performances are strong, although it takes a little while for things to get going. I particularly liked Dan Stevens as Septimus. As the reviewer says, a feast.
- Gareth Munby, London, UK
