Kathy Miller went along to review Arcadia in Brighton on February 5 before the show comes to Aylesbury Waterside next month. 

It isn’t often that I get to use the words sex, literature, formal gardens and pigeons in the same sentence, but all four collide in Arcadia, Tom Stoppard’s brilliant time-travelling exploration of the relationship between certainty and uncertainty and between the past and the present, which I saw in Brighton last week and which comes to Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre from March 2–7.

When the play premiered in London 20 years ago, one reviewer predicted that it was “set to be the greatest play of its time” and if you admire Stoppard’s verbal gymnastics, I highly recommend this production and its talented cast.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea however; in fact another 1993 critic described it as “too clever by two and three quarters.”

Certainly, anything written by Stoppard means that the themes are articulated with such a dazzling combination of wit, compassion and eloquence that the language often obscures the plot  -  and you are left wondering how anyone so far up themselves ever gets to see daylight.

But what is so clever about Arcadia is that the action moves seamlessly between 1809/12 and the present, ingeniously using the same set and props for both periods, with a live tortoise reminding us of the enduring nature of life’s big questions.

I won’t spoil it for you, except to say that the nature of order and chaos are examined in 1809-12 through the eyes of Thomasina, a teenage maths prodigy and her handsome tutor Septimus; and simultaneously via the researches of Hannah and Bernard, two sparring academics who find themselves in Thomasina’s elegant home and gardens some 200 years later.

Despite the high-brow subjects discussed, the play also contains some wonderfully farcical elements, with much opening and closing of doors, usually when the plot swaps centuries or when there’s some adultery going on.  

There’s also a snooty butler, whose sole purpose in life is to pass on gossip about the illicit assignations between the 19th Century house guests, including the poet Lord Byron, whom we never see, but whose presence is crucial to the plot.

There’s an element of mystery too, some haunting music and terrific characterisation.

I loved every minute of it, even if I can’t pretend to have understood it all.

Coincidentally, Stoppard was quoted last weekend as lamenting the dumbing-down of modern audiences, who he says, have to have every joke or reference spelled out for them in a way they didn’t two decades ago.

Maybe I’m one of the people he’s describing, because despite having Googled the plot first (absolutely necessary if you want to understand it), I still came away believing that the message of the play is that you can be as intellectual as you like, but somehow, sex always gets in the way.

And I can’t believe that’s what Stoppard intended.    

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.