Previewing at the Duke of York's Theatre from 27 May, with press night on 4 June (nb this is a change to previously announced date), Arcadia is currently booking until 12 September 2009.
Set designs are by Hildegard Bechtler, costume design is by Amy Roberts, lighting is by Paul Anderson and sound is by Simon Baker. Arcadia will be presented in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions, Roger Berlind, Robert G. Bartner and Olympus Theatricals.
April 1809, a stately home in Derbyshire.... Thomasina, a gifted pupil, proposes a startling theory, beyond her comprehension. All around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries. Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard are piecing together puzzling clues, curiously recalling those events of 1809, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.
Arcadia received its world premiere in 1993 at the National Theatre. Directed by Trevor Nunn, the production transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. Tom Stoppard went on to win both the Laurence Olivier Award and the New York Drama Critics' Best New Play Award.
The first of Tom Stoppard's plays to be staged was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. His other plays include The Coast of Utopia, The Invention of Love, Jumpers, Hapgood, The Real Inspector Hound, Night and Day, Travesties and After Magritte. His adaptations include Schnitzler's Dalliance and Undiscovered Country. He has written new versions of Chekhov's The Seagull and Pirandello's Henry IV. His film scripts include The Human Factor, Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love (co-written with Marc Norman) and Enigma. In 2006 Stoppard's multi award-winning Rock 'n' Roll opened at the Royal Court. The production, directed by Trevor Nunn, subsequently enjoyed a sell-out West End run as well as a season on Broadway produced by Sonia Friedman Productions.
InterNational Theatre director David Leveaux has previously directed Tom Stoppard's Jumpers for the National Theatre and The Real Thing at the Donmar Warehouse. Both productions transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. For the Almeida his productions are Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, Moonlight and Betrayal, as well as Neil LaBute's The Distance From Here. More recently he has directed Rudolf in Vienna, A Doll's House in Tokyo and Three Sisters for The Abbey Theatre, Dublin, as well as the Broadway revivals of Cyrano de Bergerac with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner, The Glass Menagerie with Jessica Lange and Fiddler on the Roof. Leveaux's other Broadway credits include Nine with Antonio Banderas, Betrayal with Juliette Binoche, Electra with Zoë Wanamaker, Anna Christie with Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson and A Moon for the Misbegotten with Kate Nelligan. His other London theatre credits include Sinatra Live at the London Palladium and Electra for the Donmar Warehouse.
www.arcadiatheplay.com
