The Stage

Arcadia

Published Monday 27 September 2010 at 12:35 by Ben East

The Library Theatre in Manchester has been staging solid rather than spectacular work for a number of years now. That’s not a criticism: the cramped basement space in the Central Library has long ceased being practical for a theatre company in the 21st century.

Alasdair Craig (Valentine Coverly) and Cate Hamer (Hannah Jarvis) in Arcadia at the Lowry, Salford Photo: Gerry Murray

So choosing Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia as the first production after a temporary move to The Lowry (a more permanent home in the city centre is earmarked for 2014) is a symbol of the company’s ambitions. After all, Arcadia is no easy proposition - an amusing but dense play that is easy to admire but difficult to love.

Still, director Chris Honer and designer Judith Croft pull off the dual time-setting - a drawing room of an English country house in 1809 and current day - which would certainly have been a struggle in The Library Theatre’s former home. It has the feel of a dramatised version of Who Do You Think You Are? as our contemporaries delve into a mysterious past, while the 19th-century characters look towards an enlightened future. Both generations are fascinated by science.

Any problems are not unique to this production: actors with far greater profiles than this cast have previously struggled with a script that spends as much time discussing mathematical formulae as characters’ feelings. It doesn’t excuse performances here that sometimes lurch from the florid and stagey to the pure confusing, but getting a handle on this particular Arcadia requires a sharpness of mind for everyone concerned. Nevertheless, Charlie Anson is wry and charismatic as 19th-century tutor Septimus Hodge and the key relationship with star pupil Thomasina Coverly (a geekily charming Beth Park) is impressively relaxed and natural.

Hopefully, they are the future of a company that, with a more prestigious space to play in, has greater expectations to fulfil, too.