Arcadia: Or, The Play You Have to See This Summer
Seldom do I come across a play that inspires me so deeply, I find I must go out and buy a copy of the script. I love theatre, and I love reading, but for some reason I am happy to leave most plays at the stage door. The ephemerality of the performance becomes part and parcel of its charm.
Such was not the case with Arcadia. Widely regarded as the late playwright Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece, Arcadia transcends easy description: it unfolds in dual timelines, one modern (1993) and one charmingly vintage (1809); it is a harmonious ode to oft-dichotomized disciplines, the humanities and mathematics; it is as much about sex and base attraction as it is about love. The blend of wordplay, dramatic irony, and timeless themes earned Stoppard comparisons to Shakespeare at the play’s opening performance at the National Theatre in 1993.
The current London iteration of Arcadia was announced on 29 October 2025, exactly one month before Stoppard’s passing. This gave added spotlight to the production, which premiered at the Old Vic on 19 January 2026, as it was the first major production of any play by Stoppard following his passing. The production boasts director Carrie Cracknell, coming off a buzzy 2024 season heading The Grapes of Wrath at the National Theatre and Carmen at the Met Opera.
In full transparency, I knew none of this when I sat down to watch Arcadia in mid-February. The tickets were a gift, and I had not done much more than read posters advertising the play as “sexy,” “timeless,” “a must-see.” The lights dimmed, and I was entranced. The first scene, taking place in 1809, covers everything from “carnal embrace” to chaos theory to the existence of free will. The remaining six scenes grow no less complex, mixing, as one character comments, “disorder out of disorder into disorder”, until the timelines are co-occurring and characters speaking over each other in the finale. And yet, nothing feels out of place. Suspension of disbelief is unnecessary, as the complexities are not fantastical; each thread in Stoppard’s tapestry is some very real, true-to-life aspect of human existence. Each character has some unique blend of neuroses and higher ideals, rather it be Septimus’s polymathy and casual intimacy, Valentine’s courtly love and stalled doctoral dissertation, or Hannah’s steely exterior contrasted with her fascination for Romantic-era literature. It is the sheer humanity of each character that brings the play to life; it is their emotional and inter-relational arcs that drive the plot forward, rather than external events.
The notable beauty of Arcadia for someone like me – a student at Imperial – is that it gets the sciences right. Two characters in the play are particularly fascinated with mathematics: thirteen-year-old Thomasina in 1809, whose education is limited to at-home tutoring, and young-adult Valentine in 1993, who writing his dissertation in maths at Oxford. Thomasina’s prodigy and non-traditional education allow her to ask questions of the limits of mathematics: “if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?” Her curiosity drives her to make iterated graphs of natural phenomena, which Valentine is later asked to decipher by literary historian Hannah. He quickly brushes aside what the audience knows to be true brilliance as child’s play, insisting that Thomasina could not have known what the graphs meant, an all-too-common dismissal of women in STEM, especially 30 years ago. But in the same scene, he inhabits that self-same curiosity, lamenting that relativity only explains very large and very small phenomena, not “the things people write poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls – and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in”. One of the (albeit many) drumbeats by which Arcadia marches is this call-to-arms, the inherent mystery that drives all of us at Imperial to push ourselves ever onward.
The Old Vic production has been granted a new home at the Duke of York’s Theatre from 20 June to 12 September 2026. Director Carrie Cracknell will continue shepherding the story, and many of the actors are reprising their roles as well. Selfishly, I am grateful that the roles of Thomasina and Septimus have not been recast; Isis Hainsworth (who was nominated for an Olivier for her Old Vic run) and Seamus Dillane have some of the best chemistry I have seen in the past decade on stage or screen. Tickets start at £25, and I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate the end of exams than to be reminded of the beauty of our studies – go see it while you can!
