Arcadia

In one of our greatest contemporary plays, set in two distinct centuries, Tom Stoppard explores the nature of truth, time, sex and attraction with absorbing and tragic humour. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're 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. 'It 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 cliché about Stoppard is that he is a brilliant manipulator of ideas, but with no heart. Yet here - at the core of his best play - is the greatest love story on the British stage for decades. Yes, the characters bond over ideas - but some of the most interesting people in life do just that. That would be enough to make Arcadia a masterpiece - 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 - not just of ourselves, but of our species?' INDEPENDENT 'I have never left a new play more convinced that I'd witnessed a masterpiece.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A brilliant, brilliant play. A play of ideas, of consummate theatricality, of sophisticated entertainment and of heartache for time never to be regained. ' SUNDAY TIMES