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Arcadia  By  cover art

Arcadia

By: Tom Stoppard
Narrated by: Kate Burton,Mark Capri,Jennifer Dundas,Gregory Itzin,Christopher Neame,Peter Paige,Douglas Weston
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Publisher's summary

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia merges science with human concerns and ideals, examining the universe's influence in our everyday lives and ultimate fates through relationship between past and present, order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge. Set in an English country house in the years 1809-1812 and 1989, the play examines the lives of two modern scholars and the house's current residents with the lives of those who lived there 180 years earlier.

An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:

Kate Burton as Hannah

Mark Capri as Chater

Jennifer Dundas as Thomasina

Gregory Itzin as Bernard Nightingale

David Manis as Captain Brice

Christopher Neame as Noakes/Jellaby

Peter Paige as Valentine

Darren Richardson as Augustus

Kate Steele as Chloe

Serena Scott Thomas as Lady Croom

Douglas Weston as Septimus

Music composed and arranged by John Rubinstein.

Includes an interview with Steven Strogatz, the author of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos and professor at the Cornell University School of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics.

Directed by John Rubinstein. Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood, in December of 2008.

Arcadia is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts in the modern world.

©2009 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2009 L.A. Theatre Works

Critic reviews

“Tom Stoppard’s richest, most ravishing comedy to date. A play of wit, intellect, language, brio and emotion,” and The Royal Institution of Great Britain calls it: “the best science book ever written.” ( )The New York Times)

What listeners say about Arcadia

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great production

This audible performance of Arcadia is very well acted and produced. My chief criteria for these audible plays are: (1) How closely does the performance stick to the script - i.e. have they omitted a significant portion of the dialog? (2) Sound quality: does it sound like they recorded a live stage performance with a microphone sitting on a corner of the stage, or was it recorded specifically for a listening audience? And do they use sound effects well?

On both accounts this is a high-quality production. It is also a charming, funny and intelligent play.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Even in Arcadia...

This dramatization is not quite the playwright's original text, but it takes some helpful artistic liberties that describe scenes and make the unspoken parts of the play flow easily within the dialogue. As far as the play, Stoppard is a master of transforming life's circumstances into math problems. He ruined statistical probability and chance in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." He bashed Zeno's Paradox and geometry in "Jumpers." Now thermodynamics and Mandelbrot's fractals fall victim to the wit and genius of Stoppard; telling his love stories and the tragi-comedic foibles of life through the ages, using sex as the chaotic "strange attractor" that ruins the Newtonian universe. I listened to this dramatization, then read the play, then listened again with even more enjoyment. A friend of mine listened to the dramatization before attending a recent performance in New York, and he said that the audio "preview" greatly enhanced his enjoyment of the play itself. Even if you don't know one thing about entropy or self-similarity, this rendition will provide a delightful brain-teaser.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Good Cast but Was Lost on the Story

I thought that the narrators were, for the most part, great.

I had not read this play before so I was not familiar with the story at all. Therefore, I remained very confused about what the story was about. I couldn't keep track of the characters and their roles, and I kind of lost interest as it wasn't what I was expecting, leading me to replay scenes as my ears turned out. It could be that these types of plays are just not for me.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Stoppard's wit and a bright, playful cast

History, literature, science, gardening...a brilliant girl out of time and some lamebrained literary detective work. Stoppard at the top of his game, and a cast that includes Gregory Itzin, far from the evil Nixonian president he played on 24. You'll never hear the words "carnal embrace" again without giggling, just a little.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Needs more that one listening.

If the interviews that came after the reading had come BEFORE the reading, I'd gotten a lot more of of this -- after all, it's an illustration of chaos theory. I needed a 'heads up'. It is witty, and intellectually stimulating, so I might give it another go.
Two sets of characters in two different time periods are hard to follow by ear alone, unless the performances are carefully designed to be easily distinguishable.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Genius

What did you love best about Arcadia?

What I loved most? Wow, I'd be hard pressed to say since the entire play is great. I could pinpoint a favorite line, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Thomasina, for sure. I've always imagined having a daughter like her. Something about a strong willed precocious female protagonist really draws me in.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This was an ensemble cast rather than a single narrator.

Any additional comments?

I had to analyze this play for a class and I can't wait to listen to it again. The actors are superb and foley is spot on. I read this play while listening to it at the same time; there are very few liberties taken with stage direction, but the ones that were better served the listening experience.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Very Enjoyable

I saw this production in London in 1994 ( I believe this was the year) and was brought back to remember the simple sets. This play was a good choice for audio production and the acting was superb!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Cultural shifts and imagination

How do you develop the capacity to link, in a continuous loop, the most abstract and the most concrete? By fleeing from one culture to another and to another and having to make sense of it all. This is what Tom Stoppard has done. From the eye of a chaotic experience to imagine order. Wethankhim.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great version of Arcadia

Very well-performed recording of Arcadia. Audio quality excellent. I loved the bonus interview with Steven Strogatz at the end.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • JD
  • 08-09-23

Notice things now I didn't notice 30 years ago

The first thing to be aware of is that this was written 30 years ago, when there was less awareness of the impact of certain words, and less awareness of how much women's opinions were marginalized.

That said, assuming you can forgive certain characters their shortcomings, the play in some ways works even better now with that awareness, and the ideas put forward carry more weight because of the loss of opportunity.

The cast is what makes this possible. The late Gregory Itzin somehow makes Nightingale more than a misogynist. Kate Burton holds him to account as Hannah with how she speaks as much as what she says. Douglas Weston as Septimus and Jennifer Dundas as Thomasina are the emotional and philosophical heart, because everything they say feels real. Every character, and every actor, delivers a moment that sets them apart.

And the science, and the philosophy that frames the play layer after layer. Tom Stoppard is known for this layering across his plays - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; The Real Thing; The Real Inspector Hound; etc. Like the mathematics that are referenced in the play, you can find a number of different patterns in the play itself, feeding back into the concepts the play itself discusses.

I also highly recommend the interview with the Cornell University researcher that follows the production which stirs all of those ideas again.

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