Mary Baldwin College Theatre continues its season with Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, directed by Greg A. Beam. Performances are April 6-10, Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 and Sunday at 2:00, in the Fletcher Collins Theatre, Deming Hall.
Tom Stoppard is a master of verbal gymnastics, leaving clues for the audience as the story unfolds.
In 1809 at Sidley Park, ancestral home of the Coverlys, Lord and Lady Croom, a precocious 13 year old Thomasina is finding mathematical principals far beyond her years. Meanwhile her tutor, Septimus Hodge, gets ready to review “The Couch of Eros”, dubious poetry written by Mr. Chater, with whose wife Hodge has recently been seen “in carnal embrace”. Add to the mix Lady Croom’s brother, Captain Brice, also enamored of Charity Chater, and Mr. Noakes, a landscape architect who is busily rebuilding the beautiful Sidley Park in the new Gothic style, complete with a hermitage.
In the present day, three scholars are doing research at Sidley Park. Valentine, the son of the family, is doing his graduate mathematics research on the game records from 1809 to find an equation for population growth in Biology. Hannah Jarvis is using Lady Croom’s garden book and Noake’s book of sketches in her research on the landscape, while Bernard Nightingale is determined to prove that Lord Byron killed Chater in a duel, with or without evidence.
The play moves between 1809 and the present as the current inhabitants try to discover the reality of the past while we, the audience, see it all unfold.
Septimus Hodge (Daniel Burrows) tries to understand the “new” mathematics that Thomasina (Lydia Wossum-Fisher) is finding by instinct. Lady Croom (Justine Mackey) berates Noakes (Daniel Kirkland)for destroying her lovely home. Chater ( Paul Southerington), and Cpt. Brice ( Zed Kosowitz) vie to protect Mrs. Chater’s honor , while Jelleby the housekeeper (Elizabeth Van Doren) acts as a go between. In the present Valentine (Emily Hurst), Hannah (Michelle Laurence), and Bernard (Chad Marriott) delve into the past along with Chloe, the daughter of the house (Virgina Daniels). The cast is completed by Randi Sams as Augustus in 1908 and Gus in the present, the other sons of the house. And let’s not forget the tortoise Plautus/Lightning.
Tickets are $7 for students and senior citizens and $12 for others, and may be reserved by calling 540-887-7189, or on-line at www.mbc.edu/theatre.
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