Tom Stoppard''s masterpiece, with a beautiful new cover.
Comparing what weâre looking for misses the point. Itâs wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise weâre going out the way we came in.
Arcadia premiered at the National Theatre, London, 1993, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play and the Evening Standard Award for Best Play.
âIt is a laugh-filled tragedy about what happens if you take the intoxicants of poetry and science seriously. It is a play where Stoppard turns himself into a clown whose juggling balls are Romanticism, Classicism, and the meaning of life . . . The stale clich© about Stoppard is that he is a brilliant manipulator of ideas, but with no heart. Yet here â" at the core of his best play â" is the greatest love story on the British stage for decades. Yes, the characters bond over ideas â" but some of the most interesting people in life do just that. That would be enough to make Arcadia a masterpiece â" but it is even more than that. The play stirs the most basic and profound questions humans can ask. How should we live with the knowledge that extinction is certain â" not just of ourselves, but of our species?â INDEPENDENT
âI have never left a new play more convinced that Iâd witnessed a masterpiece.â DAILY TELEGRAPH
âA brilliant, brilliant play. A play of ideas, of consummate theatricality, of sophisticated entertainment and of heartache for time never to be regained.â SUNDAY TIMES
Industry Reviews
There's no doubt about it. 'Arcadia' is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and ... emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow. "Vincent Canby, The New York Times"" "There's no doubt about it. 'Arcadia' is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and ... emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow." --Vincent Canby, The New York Times "There's no doubt about it. 'Arcadia' is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and ... emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow."
--Vincent Canby, "The New York Times"
