Arcadia

Nineteenth-century Derbyshire: a girl looks at her rice pudding and perceives the inevitable decline of the Newtonian universe. Her tutor, discovered with another man's wife, is challenged to a duel – and a great romantic poet comes to stay.

The same room, 200 years later: academics are still trying to figure it all out. In 1809 the genius of Thomasina Coverly is overshadowed by the secrets of the adults around her. In the present day, Hannah and Bernard try to piece together what happened, aided by a mathematician and his pet tortoise, Lightning.

Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece covers art and poetry, genius and madness, chaos and order, nature and geometry. Not to mention landscape gardening, the laws of thermodynamics. And sex, of course – the attraction that Newton left out.

The New York Times described Arcadia as Stoppard’s 'richest, most ravishing comedy'.