Award-winning comedy masterpiece, Arcadia, is set to dazzle audiences at the Aylesbury Waterside Theatre when it comes to town next month. 

Kathy Miller went along to preview the show in Brighton and caught up with the cast of the Olivier award-winning comedy afterwards. 

Wilf Scolding

Wilf Scolding (Septimus) had to read Arcadia “six or seven times before I understood it” and admits it took two months to grow his whiskers for the part of the smooth-talking 19th century tutor, whose mysterious final years are central to the research carried out some 200 years later by rival academics Hannah and Bernard.

“We only had four weeks to rehearse, but as soon as I was offered the role, they told me not to shave my sideburns,” he says.  

Scolding, who trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, was last seen in the BBC-1 World War I drama ‘The Passing Bells’  and is now looking forward to seeing his girlfriend Emily Barber play Gwendolen in a forthcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest, alongside David Suchet.

Performing in Bucks is something of a homecoming for the 24-year-old, who has family in Brill.

“I hope you’ll come to see us again in Aylesbury,” he tells me.

“Then you can explain the plot to my mum.”

Flora Montgomery

Northern Irish born actor Flora Montgomery (Hannah) is familiar with the Chilterns, having acted in an episode of Midsomer Murders, but is at her happiest when relaxing on the banks of Strangford Lough near Belfast, where she and her husband (owner of London’s chic 1 Lombard Street restaurant) try to escape to as often as possible.

A former Irish Times best actress award winner, she laughs that she is “far too old” to give me her age.

Looking and sounding like a pure English rose, she tells me she had “a really thick Belfast accent” until she was 13, when she came to Down House school in Berkshire, where she dimly remembers a certain young Kate Middleton starting, just as she was leaving. (Anyone know what happened to her?)

Flora says she worked hard at steering Hannah away from the embittered, tweedy blue-stocking stereotype, although she would love Hannah to have “a soulful character to walk into her life and love her.”

And her favourite line from the play? Easy, she says, without a moment’s hesitation.

“Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.”

Ed MacArthur

Comedy comes naturally to Ed MacArthur, who plays Thomasina’s descendant, the eccentric Valentine Coverly.

It is the first major role for the delightfully smiley 26-year old, who graduated from the Bristol Old Vic only last summer, after several summers writing and performing comedy sketches at the Edinburgh Fringe while studying at Leeds University.

“Deep expressions of emotion are frowned upon in my family so acting is cathartic,” he tells me, not entirely seriously I suspect.

His ideal career would include plenty more comedy, but he tells me how exciting it is to be acting in a play that is “soooo complicated” because the challenge is not to rush through it.

And his dream role?

“I’ve love to do Falstaff, but I’m too skinny,” he laughs.

“Give it 20 more years of drinking and cakes”

Dakota Blue Richards

“I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had in a job,” says Dakota Blue Richards (Thomasina), known to many TV viewers as the troubled Franky in the E4 teen drama Skins.

She admits she was terrified that stage fright would get the better of her, but is loving the theatre.

“To my surprise I’m hooked on the stage. It’s so exhilarating to have instant feed back,” says the 20-year old, who has been acting since she was ten.

She says there is “no particular story” behind her unusual name, other than to admit that “it’s hard to spell and remember and I’d rather have had something else, but I have no idea what.”

Apart from a brief stint doing admin for a domestic abuse charity, acting is the only job Dakota has ever had and while she can’t wait for her next stage role, “something political, a service or volunteering” would be her choice of career if acting dried up.

As for the future, all she will tell me is that “hopefully, it will be something slightly different.”

Watch this space.

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia comes to Aylesbury Waterside Theatre from 2 to 7 March. Tickets range from £12.40 to £37.90, available online at www.atgtickets.com/aylesbury or by calling the box office on 0844 871 7607.