Arcadia

What a superb play Arcadia is.

Who else but Tom Stoppard could mould the themes of history, landscape, mathematics, physics, love, sex, classicism v romanticism, research v guesswork and the Heat Death of the Universe into something so witty, so gripping, so intriguing and, at the end, so moving?

Can Thomasina, young daughter of Lord and Lady Croom of Sidley Park, really have discovered the second law of thermodynamics in the early nineteenth century; after all she's too young as yet to waltz? Did Lord Byron kill someone in a duel there? What's the secret of the hermit in the house's newly romanticised garden landscape? How does all this affect the lives and careers of two rival historians in the present? And can the researches and interests of the present younger generation at Sidley Park throw any light onto the lives, loves and passions of that earlier generation?

By separating past and present scenes until the very end (they are usually intermingled), Richard Baron's production loses some of the wit and impact of the physical connections between then and now. But it more than makes up for it with the greater impact of the emotional and sexual relationships.

In the past there is a wonderful rapport between Helen Millar's mature before her time Thomasina and her tutor, Septimus, an outstanding Grant O'Rourke, gradually shifting from urbane man of reason to man of confusion.

In the present there's Sarah Stanley's splendid historian, Hannah, a rigorous academic and confident yet confused woman. Her opposite number is media don Bernard, to whom Jonathan Coote gives a magnificent shallow confidence. He's a man armoured by his certainties, even when they have no basis in proof.

Lady Croom, nineteenth century hostess par excellence, bursts into flaming proto-Lady Bracknell life in Jacqueline Dutoit's larger-than-life performance.

Perhaps most impressive of all are the Croom children. In addition to Thomasina there is the modern family. Christian Edwards has the difficult job of making eldest son Valentine both a confident young aristocrat and a believable mathematician who has to clarify the complicated scientific concepts, not only for Hannah but for the audience as well. He handles all the difficulties with seemingly consummate ease and brings the science to vivid life. Also very good are Esther McAuley as uncomplicatedly sexual sister Chloe and Joel Sams as silent, withdrawn brother Gus.

Altogether this is a very impressive, absorbing and highly enjoyable production of a truly excellent play, one whose ideas will keep bouncing around in your head long after seeing it and one that, in this production at least, will leave you with the sadness of loss and the hope of life's continuance – for the moment at least.