ARCADIA

Often considered one of Tom Stoppard’s best plays, Arcadia explores themes of the nature of truth and time, the clash of Enlightenment and Romantic worldviews, and how the unpredictable and the predetermined come together to make everything the way it is.  Stoppard gives each character strong beliefs, and then puts them in situations that massively challenge those beliefs.  He uses subject matter that is often considered boring (calculus, botany, latin), to explore themes of love, chaos, and the end of life and the universe (the title of the play comes from the Latin phrase, “Et in Arcadia, Ego”: “Even in a utopia, I [death] exist”).  And he does all this in high comedic style.  Arcadia is considered one of Stoppard’s best for good reason: he has masterfully interwoven these themes in a hilarious play, about beautifully flawed humans.