Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, July 19, 2013 . . . The Shaw Festival is pleased to announce its production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is now officially sold out. This multilayered masterpiece straddling time and space, order and chaos, is directed by Eda Holmes and is currently in previews at the Shaw Festival’s Studio Theatre.
The question of “What is carnal embrace?” innocently posed by precocious teenager Thomasina Coverly (Kate Besworth) to her tutor Septimus Hodge (Gray Powell) at Sidley Park in 1809 begins Arcadia’s time and intellect bending ride through the past and present day. Their story is explored and hilariously reconfigured in the late 20th century by writer Hannah Jarvis (Diana Donnelly) and aggressive academic Bernard Nightingale (Patrick McManus), along with mathematical genius Valentine Coverly (Martin Happer). Their delving into the past unearths scandals and mysteries with Lord Byron putting in a guest appearance. Passion for knowledge, for truth, for understanding, fuels both halves of the story, but what ultimately blooms and endures through time is love.
Designer Sue LePage, lighting designer Michelle Ramsay and sound designer Allen Cole create the world in which dichotomies dance amongst one another and the boundaries between time ultimately blur.
Winner of an Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award for Best Play, Arcadia has been called “the greatest play of its time”. The New York Times called it “Tom Stoppard’s richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and…emotion.”
About Arcadia
July 14 – September 7; Opens: July 27
Arcadia is on stage in the Studio Theatre (10 Queen’s Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake).
Presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
Arcadia is sponsored by Paradigm Capital Inc.
The Shaw Festival’s 2013 season began April 3, runs until November 3 and features 10 productions presented on the Festival’s four Niagara-on-the-Lake stages. For more information on our 2013 season, performance schedule and ticket information, please visit www.shawfest.com or call 1-800-511-SHAW.
Photo: Gray Powell and Nicole Underhay. ©2013 David Cooper.
2013-07-19
Niagara-on-the-Lake: Shaw Festival’s sold-out production of Arcadia is now in previews