Calling this a comedy is a bit of a misnomer: if you came to see this expecting a relaxing evening of laughs you’d get a bit of a shock.
This is definitely a play where you need to keep your wits about you from the start and can take nothing for granted.
Or it may just be that this production, 22 years after the play’s first outing, has shifted the emphasis a little, reflecting the current trend for the arts to explore scientific principles.
Arcadia has a young, enthusiastic and very talented cast, including Dakota Blue Richards, who is maturing into a wonderful young actor, and brings great depth, as well as lots of charm and sparkle, to the role of Thomasina, the young aristocrat educated well ahead of her era whose startling insight into physics forms the play’s central premise.
The rest of the cast match her, especially Ed MacArthur, also making his professional stage debut as Valentine Coverly, Thomasina’s modern-day equivalent, just as intelligent but without the social graces of the 17th century.
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