The play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard is not a show you should go to see if you think you can 
sleep half the time and still understand the plot-line. This complicated, intense play requires the audience’s full attention. This doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t laughs interspersed throughout the script; quite the contrary! Arcadia is full of humor, science, math, literature, history, curiosity, and love.
Thomasina (Bel Powley) is a curious young teenager whose main duty is to learn and play piano during the 19th century in England. Her tutor Septimus Hodge (Tom Riley) is full of witty humor and, as well as teaching Thomasina math, teaches her philosophy and the ways of life. The difficulty arises when the play switches from the 19th to the 21st century. Hannah Jarvis (Lia Williams) is an author who is investigating the gardens of the estate. She is interested in the hermitage built on the grounds back around the time that Thomasina was living. Bernard Nightingale (Billy 
Crudup) is a professor who just happens to stop by the estate because he too is interested in events that took place during the 19th century (both characters happen to be 19th century fanatics). Through searching for information on their topics, Hannah finds an old workbook of Thomasina’s filled with math. She asks her fiancé Valentine Coverly (Raul Esparza) to make sense of the graphs since he is involved in sciences. They find out that the math Thomasina attempted is something that current mathematicians had only stumbled upon a mere 30 years prior.
The set was stagnant, with big windows in the back and a nice French door that was usually open. The center was occupied by a wooden desk topped with books and Plautus, a turtle. The play ran three hours. It was definitely something that I enjoyed because of its complicatedness. As the centuries kept switching, the audience learned more about what happened in the past in terms of what Hannah and Bernard were looking for and what they were too busy to even acknowledge.
Arcadia
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
April 16, 2011
Marina B. Nebro
