Et in Arcadia ego (ah, the memory liners on!) by Gina Guglielmo

Tom Stoppard used the irony in the above Latin epigram as a major motif of his play, Arcadia. The phrase, which is not attributable to any ancient author, means "Even in Arcadia, I exist" the "I" being "death" who dwells even in the most idyllic lives. The same phrase was used by Nietzsche; Evelyn Waugh used the motto for the heading of Book I of Brideshead Revisited; it was misquoted by William Faulkner, and was appropriated by Goethe in a memoir. W.H. Auden appropriated the saying for poem title; Walter Pater alludes to it in his essay on the philosopher, Winklemann; it even appeared recently as a line in a song by the band, Killing Joke. Painters too found the idea arresting. Poussin created two canvases depicting the idea, but Guercino’s picture is worth a whole library of words. (See accompanying image)

Tom Stoppard is undoubtedly the most ingenious of all modern playwrights, so when he chose to explore the idea of death hovering above the most vivacious and ephemeral of lifestyles, one could expect a hell of a ride. The play starts out in the early 19th C., the Romantic Period in England, at Sidley Park where a precocious child, Thomasina Coverly, Lady Thomasina actually, is approaching the discovery of a mathematical breakthrough while being tutored by an Oxfordian named Septimus Hodge. Septimus was at school with that bad George Gordon, Lord Byron, whom he brings to Sidley for a visit. Also sashaying around the drawing room are Lady Croom, the mistress of Sidley; a writer of most bathetic rhymes named Ezra Chater; Captain Brice, Lady Croom’s sea-captain brother; and a demented architect Richard Nokes who is systematically converting all Sidley Park’s classical and orderly gardens, designed by Capability Brown, into a Romantic wilderness. For his troubles he is excoriated by that harpy, Lady Groom, and rechristened Culpability Nokes. A fascinating character is the licentious Mrs. Chatter who has affairs with all the above men, but with Stoppardian deft humor, never appears in the play!

These goings on would seem enough for a night’s entertainment. But remember who is writing this Arcadia. The setting of Sidley Hall remains the same, but the audience is catapulted into the present where a novelist/garden book writer Hannah Jarvis is researching the pre-Nokian gardens. The descendants of the Coverlys are in residence: Chloe, Valentine and the mostly mute Gus. His counterpart in the other world is Tomasina’s brother, Augustus. Hannah’s peaceful diggings are interrupted when a scholarly critic, one Bernard Nightingale, comes to the stately house to do a bit of unearthing on his own. He believes that Byron killed Chater in a duel, and tries to unearth the evidence to stage a coup in the literary world. Valentine is a computer savant working on his own math breakthrough (using grouse and the old hunting logs of Sidley), and is connected to the past because he has found Tomasina’s workbooks. These modern folk are constantly one-upping each other with discoveries in one book or another, and eventually solve the mysteries shrouding Byron and the mysterious Hermit who lived a solitary life on the estate for twenty years and left rooms and rooms full of paper.

The intellectual and scientific dialogue bandied about by these characters both in the past and present is daunting and could be off-putting were it not for the skillful handling of plot, personalities and technical jargon in the recent production of Arcadia, directed by Aaron Posner at The Folger Theater. When one realizes that Stoppard takes us from the old world of Newtonian Predictability to the new realization of an increasingly chaotic universe, it’s amazing that the play truly comes off as a deeply human, humorous and poignant experience. Posner’s approach was everything: the cast was perfect in its fidelity to the text; these were living, breathing, flawed, loveable human beings who despite their brilliance beyond most normal people’s taught us this message: "It’s the wanting to know that makes us matter." In the program notes, Posner counsels us to ever be open to "wonder" as he leads us through this magical mystery tour.

Holly Twyford was marvelously wry as Hannah. The expressive face and body language were wonders to behold. Erin Weaver was a beguiling Tomasina and managed to portray both genius and girlish vulnerability. Her romantic waltz with Septimus at the conclusion, while contemporary characters strode in and out of the scene, introduced a note of sadness knowing as we did his and her fate. Suzanne O’Donnell as Lady Croom, was a protean force of nature, a comic whirlwind of a seductress whose life was idyllic and painless since her most serious thoughts were about the Ha-Ha in the park.

Equally strong and devastatingly attractive in their roles were the gentlemen of the ensemble. The comedic turns and bombast of Eric Hissom’s Nightingale were perfectly matched to Stoppard’s twisting and turning ideas. Cody Nickell made such an appealing Septimus that one fell in love with him along with Tomasina, not just for his beauty, but for his clever mind, his ability to laugh out loud at himself and his society, and his underlying vulnerability to the phantom that lurks in this earthly Paradise. Peter Stray deserved a medal for memorizing and clarifying all that mathematical jargon. It is not hyperbole to state that the entire cast of Arcadia lived their parts to the hilt. Finally I would be remiss not to conclude with my own Helen Hayes nomination for best costumes this season: there is just one adjective for Kate-Turner Walker’s designs: delicious!