STAGE WEST: "Arcadia" at Cygnet Theatre

Harper Haden and Corydon Melgoza in "Arcadia."                                                 Karli Cadel Photography

            The late Tom Stoppard’s time-tripping “Arcadia” is a work of dense – and intimidating – concepts. Its characters’ inquiries into the very physics of the universe and their tangible implications for human existence are not for the science-squeamish or the impatient.
            So where does that leave me, a student of arts and letters (though a humble one, unlike the pompous academic Bernard Nightingale of “Arcadia”) for whom questions of entropy or chaos theory or even elementary  mathematics are baffling?
            In seeing “Arcadia,” first produced in 1993, for the first time at Cygnet Theatre under the direction of Sean Murray (who’s directed productions of it twice before) my initial attraction to the complex, two-and-half-hour-long piece was strictly appreciation for the rhythm and richness of Stoppard’s language, even concerning things I didn’t understand. This admiration was enhanced by a cast at Cygnet composed of seasoned professionals and one gifted newcomer.
            Yet here’s where “Arcadia” taps into its humanity and rises above revelations about the physical world in which we all reside: We come to care about its characters. Care does not necessarily equate with like. Some, such as self-obsessed researcher Nightingale (played with hungry indulgence by Richard Baird), deserve comeuppance from the outset. But in particular Thomasina Coverly (Harper Haden), the prepossessing ingenue with a brilliant mind, and Septimus Hodge (Corydon Melgoza), her tutor at an English estate in the early 19th century, ask us without saying so to take them into their hearts.
             The curious Thomasina may begin the play by asking Septimus for an explanation of “carnal embrace,” but we soon learn that she is as interested in love as she is destined to intuit the second law of thermodynamics. (And we all know that love is the most complicated, and wondrous, “concept” in all the universe.) Septimus when not tutoring Thomasina is engaging in carnal embrace of the forbidden kind at the house. He’s also a shrewd player among its denizens and guests, but he is attentive to Thomasina and quietly amazed by her steel-trap mind.
            A library at the estate, Sidley Park in Derbyshire, is the setting for the two time periods and narratives of “Arcadia.” In Thomasina’s time, April of 1809, the household is overseen by her mother, Lady Croom (Melanie Lora), dignified, intelligent and man-hungry. Guests on the premises include a gullible hack poet Ezra Chater (Fred Harlow) and his wife, an unseen character who becomes the object of multiple other men’s desire, including the also unseen master poet Lord Byron (a onetime Cambridge classmate of Septimus’). In the Crooms’ employ is the gardener Richard Noakes (Manny Fernandes) who envisions a modernized, transformed landscape around Sidley Park complete with hermitage.
            Septimus’ dramas with the Chaters, which he intends to culminate with a duel of honor, run parallel to Thomasina’s studies, curiosities and discoveries.
            In “present day” meanwhile, the library is occupied by two researchers looking into the estate’s past: the aforementioned Nightingale, who seeks to prove (and to win himself acclaim in the doing) that Lord Byron not only was at Sidley Park in 1809 but that he killed Ezra Chater in a duel and fled; and the sharp, practical-minded Hannah Jarvis (Marti Gobel), who’s looking into the Romanticized Sidley Park gardens and within them the suggested presence of a hermit. Their opposing personalities clash as much as their purposes – there’s also underlying tension over Nightingale having trashed the book Jarvis wrote about the novelist Lady Caroline Lamb. (This has a Lord Byron connection of its own.)
            Calling Jarvis his “fiancée” is the mathematician Valentine Coverly (Tanner Vydos), now owner of the estate with his sister Chloe (Emily Nightingale) and mute brother Gus (Luca Hansen). Valentine’s own field of study is the patterns of grouse population.
            Between the no-nonsense and incisive Jarvis and young Valentine, who is unburdened by ego, secrets of the past at Sidley Park – the gardens, the Lord Byron connection and most important the precocious genius of Thomasina Coverly – will be revealed. As for posturing Bernard Nightingale, refer back to my “comeuppance” reference.
            Nightingale does have his supreme intellectualized moment in the story, however, condescending toward Jarvis and Valentine though it is: a lecture that becomes a diatribe about the significance of art over science. Could this have been playwright Stoppard wrestling with his own conflicts about whether the world, indeed the universe, is better explained or expressed? We may never know, but it’s telling that “Arcadia” ends not just with “aha” moments about physics that link the past to the present but with two waltzes around the table, danced as past and present merge into one.
            Performed in Cygnet’s studio theater, “Arcadia” (as conceived by Stoppard) does not rely on props. A long table is central to the library room. The staple presence between time periods is a tortoise (not a live one here) – referred to as Septimus’ Plautus in the past and Valentine’s Lightning in the present. The symbolism of the tortoise across time requires no explication from me. (There’s also a hare, shot by Septimus, in the play). You can take these where you will lest I become a pedantic lecturer like Bernard Nightingale.
            For a production as lengthy as this one and as intricate in its storytelling “Arcadia” is neither science seminar nor talking heads talking. Its entrances and exits, movements around the table and sometimes wearying but always provocative confrontations mobilize both time periods. Elisa Benzoni’s costumes, especially in the 1809 setting, are evocative.
            Baird and Gobel prove worthy adversaries and bring physical as well as intellectual energy to “Arcadia,” while Vydos’ Valentine embodies the wonder of the play’s defining epiphanies.
            Fourteen-year-old Haden is astonishing in her understanding and portrayal of Thomasina Coverly. What a future she should have. For Melgoza, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in L.A. in 2018, the future is now. Together onstage at Cygnet they are the enduring presences of “Arcadia.”
            Its most potent reminder may be when, in responding to Thomasina’s despair over the losses in the storied fire-ravaged library of Alexandria, Septimus tells her: “We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short.”
            “Arcadia” runs through Aug. 16 at Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theatre in Liberty Station, Point Loma.