Frome Drama Club is embarking on an exciting challenge for their autumn production.
Arcadia is widely regarded as one of Tom Stoppard’s best plays – described as ‘a masterpiece’ and a ‘tour de force’ by reviewers (The Daily Telegraph and The Toronto Star).
Part love story, part detective story, part an exploration of the nature of truth and time, as modern academics researching the past are juxtaposed with what really happened, this fascinating and beautifully written play is also brim-full of humour.
The play is set in a room on the garden front of a large country house, seat of the Earls of Croom, where in the early nineteenth century the grounds are being stripped of their classical orderliness, to be made Gothic with wild waterfalls, gloomy forests, and a ruined hermitage.
In 1809, the precociously brilliant daughter of an aristocratic family and her attractive young tutor examine the possibilities of mathematics, while around them love affairs, misunderstandings, arguments and even duels blossom. Years later, research dives down mistaken alleyways, till the two periods mingle, and the audience, if not the characters, finally understand what actually occurred.
The play swaps between the two time periods throughout and Gill Morrell, director, has kept the two casts separate for the first rehearsals to give them a real feeling of discovery.
Some familiar faces in the 1809 cast include Anabella Fairgrieve (Eliza in Pygmalion) as the daughter, Giles de Rivaz (Blue Remembered Hills) as her tutor, and Andrew Morrison (One Man Two Guvnors) as the garden designer Noakes.
In the 1995 period, Laurie Parnell (Under Milk Wood) plays the ambitious academic Bernard who disrupts both the garden research and love lives of Hannah, (Lisa Kendall), Valentine (Drew Toynbee) and Chloe (Emily Toynbee).
The cast also includes a tortoise, also there throughout!
Gill Morrell, who has been invited to direct this play for Frome Drama Club, has a fantastic reputation. Productions with Shakespeare Live include The Tempest, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, and for Bath Drama she has directed, among many others, Under Milk Wood, She Stoops to Conquer, The Vortex, The Ghost Train, and Three Sisters.
With sumptuous costumes organised by Annie Webb, a recreation of a country house conservatory by Bill Jacques with props by Marcia Scott, and sound by Simon Bowman, this production promises to excite all the senses and keep us guessing right to the end.
Arcadia is at the Merlin Theatre 21st – 23rd November at 7.30pm. Tickets: £10/8 from the box office on 01373 465949. www.merlintheatre.co.uk
