THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Tom Stoppard
Duke of York’s Theatre, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4BG until September 12, 2026
The opening night of the transfer from the Old Vic of this hit revival of Stoppard’s greatest play coincided with the announcement that the Duke of York’s Theatre will be renamed in Stoppard’s honor. Long overdue, and in case you’re wondering, the venue’s not named after you-know-who but rather his great grand uncle who went on to become King George V.
When it premiered at the National Theatre in 1993 the production had stars, a proscenium arch and a huge set recreating an elegant Regency mansion. The play flits back and forth between 1809 and the 1990s, sometimes with both sets of characters simultaneously inhabiting the same space. This duality is a perfect conceit for a play which is about how the past and the present intertwine.
Carrie Cracknell’s vibrant, witty, production draws out the romance of the piece and is blessed by a superb ensemble. Unlike the original there are no big stars here – Oliver Chris from Rivals is probably the biggest name. It’s in the round (design by Guy Hoare), for no reason other than to fit in with an Old Vic season, but it means the play loses that sense of immersion that was vital, one’s concentration being distracted here by the audience. The transfer should have dumped the in-the-round staging. Alex Eales’ beautiful overhead lighting design of celestial bodies and mathematical shapes, however, perfectly complements the text and fits the concept.
Stoppard, the great autodidact, covers a multitude of themes (chaos theory, thermodynamics, fractals, iterated algorithms, the literary output of Lord Byron, the garden design of Capability Brown, Classicism, even Fermat’s last theorem) but the one he has most fun with is the self-absorption of modern-day academics, in this case literary ones. He contrasts a fictional story involving a seduction by Lord Byron while on a country house weekend in Derbyshire and whether a duel had taken place, with the modern day arrival of a pair of competitive academics desperately trying to force square pegs into round holes trying to prove their latest theory about what might have happened to a now forgotten author, Ezra Chater, who also had been there. Their findings might get them published in an academic journal or, who knows, lead to a book and perhaps the dizzying heights of being interviewed on Today about newly uncovered facts about the randy poet.
Oliver Chris has great fun with the cocky, egotistical academic Benedict, injecting the piece with some sly comic touches. His grand theory eventually crumbles, of course, but along the way his parrying with Nikki Amuka-Bird’s Hannah is a joy. Her academic specialism is the history of garden design, and it turns out to be much more fruitful than his. Amuka-Bird anchors the piece and invests her character with a wonderful calm authority. Angus Cooper is effective too as the super bright mathematical boffin Valentine (a descendant of the original family) whose analysis of grouse records (yes!) plays a pivotal role and who is mocked by Benedict. In a play where there’s a stirring argument about determinism it is rather satisfying too that the audience discovers, about halfway through, about the tragic ending that occurred in the stately mansion but must wait for it to play out.
Among the historical characters Yolanda Kettle shines as the formidable Lady Croom, getting the best lines. She is both perplexed and jealous of her incredibly precocious teenage daughter Thomasina who is tutored by the dry as dust Septimus Hodge (Seamus Dillane). Isis Hainsworth was rightly Olivier nominated for her incredibly sensitive performance here as the tragic, teenage, maths prodigy Thomasina. In fact all the female characters here totally outshine the men in every respect and put paid to the silly ideas that came up occasionally about Stoppard that he ‘couldn’t write women’ or ‘do emotion’. The treatment of the women, and how their ideas are explored and developed, is so modern it’s hard to believe the play is 33 years old.
If you’ve never seen this modern classic this production is an excellent introduction.
