Hugo Weaving, Web Weaving: Arcadia, Tom Stoppard
 
Hugo Weaving, Arcadia, Tom Stoppard, Bernard Nightingale
 

n.  Hugo Weaving ~ Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

A Sydney Theatre Company production
Bernard Nightingale: dashing, flash, egocentric academic 
Cast: Linda Cropper     Hannah Jarvis, Hugo Weaving      Bernard Nightingale, Paul Goddard    Valentine,  ??? Septimus Hodge,    ?? Thomasina, ?? Chloe, ?? Lady Croom,  ??    Ezra Chater, ?? Gus/Augustus, ??     Jellaby, ??    Richard Noakes, ??    Captain Brice 
Dir: Gale Edwards 
Theatrical run: during 1994 at the Sydney Opera House
 

Hugo Weaving: Arcadia Plot/Comments:

Tom Stoppard's brilliantly witty, cerebral and touching play was staged by Gale Edwards straight after the NT in London and performed at the Sydney Opera House with a perfect cast to skilfully balance the fast-paced social comedy with the tragic ending. 
      The cracking cast included Linda Cropper as the dry, feisty, independent academic researcher, Hannah Jarvis; Hugo Weaving as the flash, academically aggressive, socially-charming and fame-seeking university lecturer, Bernard Nightingale; and Paul Goddard as the gentle, shy, awkward scientist/Lord-in-waiting, Valentine. As seen in Bordertownand Melba , Cropper and Weaving have excellent chemistry together, setting the pace for  the sparky, venom-fuelled bantering that their Arcadia characters specialise in.
     Ingeniously staged in one room of a grand country house, the play is divided into two acts with the action seamlessly flowing between two time periods: the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, with vitally important props (e.g. books and letters) left by the actors to appear in both time frames.
 
In the Romantic era of the early nineteenth century, Thomasina ~ a lively, naïve 13 year old unnoticed genius ~ is being tutored by Septimus, her roguish and rather Byronic tutor. They casually discuss groundbreaking scientific discoveries of Thomasina's alongside sex and the general fripperies of the young. Meanwhile various aristocratic and artistic characters orbit chaotically around them. Throw in a fair degree of poetic rivalry, bedhopping, potential scandal and a visit by Byron (never seen in person) for what seems like a typical Noel Coward comedy of manners. 
 
    In the twentieth century, Hannah Jarvis is researching the history of the mad hermit once 'kept' in the gardens at Sidley Park country house as a Romantic-era 'decoration'. She is investigating how he (and the change in design of the gardens themselves) reflects the "decline from thinking to feeling" and what she sees as society's fall from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era. 
         While underway with her work, the flash, charming, English Literature lecturer and academic rival, Bernard Nightingale (Hugo Weaving), invites himself to the house with the intention of proving that Byron visited Sidley Park. Nightingale believes that while there, Byron insulted another poet about his work, flagrantly had an affair with the man's wife, was challenged to a duel and then killed him: proving this would solve the mystery on why Byron fled Britain and would bring Nightingale fame in the academic and media worlds.
Hugo Weaving, Cannes 1994 for Priscilla, B
 
Arcadia Gallery
Arcadia Classic Scenes
Next: Babe
Back:  Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Next Play: Blind Giant is Dancing
Previous Play:  That Eye, The Sky
Web Weaving
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Typical Hugo Weaving Quotes:

  • For more quotes, see the two Classic Scenes 
  • [on Valentine] "Yes. I met him. Brideshead Regurgitated"
  • "The Byron gang are going to get their dicks caught in their zip…if we collaborate"
  • "A pencilled superscription. Listen and kiss my cycle-clips!...Christ, what do you want?"                                  Hannah: "Proof"                  "Proof? Proof? You'd have to be there, you silly bitch!"
  • Valentine: "Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?"               "No you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron the chartered accountant"
  • [On his impending academic article coming]:"That comes later and in the recognized tone  ~ very dry, very modest, absolutely gloat-free and yet unmistakably 'eat your heart out, you dozy bastards'. But first it's Media Don [university lecturer], book early to avoid disappointment' "
  • "Darling--"                        Hannah: "Don't call me darling"   "Dickhead then"
  • [To Valentine, a scientist]: "Quarks, quasars ~ big bangs, black holes ~ who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?"
  • [To Hannah, after the nasty Art vs Science lynching]: "I'm sorry about that…it's no fun when it's not among pros, is it?"
  • "I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you"[followed by a sharp, stinging slap from Hannah]
  • "Fucked by a dahlia…am I fucked?"

 

Comments:

  • When shooting the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert promo video for  Alicia Bridges'  I Love the Nightlife, Hugo fell down a flight of stairs in six-inch stilettos and tore a ligament in his ankle. For several nights he went on stage at the Sydney Opera House in Arcadia with a limp, and extra emphasis was placed on a line in the play about his character being prone to driving into ditches. See Making Priscillafor more details.
  • Tom Stoppard  was present for part of the rehearsal period. The experience  came in useful when performing in Stoppard's apparently autobiographical The Real Thing in 2003.
  • Gale Edwards was at NIDA with Weaving and also directed him in John Webster's The White Devil . Linda Cropper has worked with Weaving on Melba and Bordertown. Paul Goddard was in  Babeand appeared in The Matrix as Agent Brown.  See The Usual Suspects for a huge list of recurring Weaving co-workers.
 
 
However, while Hannah represents the Classic temperament (logic, preparation, methodical thought), Bernard personifies the Romantic temperament (heat of the moment passion, oodles of charm, emotion over thought). As such, he is more than willing to jump at anything that seems to prove his point (and casually jump on any female who seems remotely receptive), rather than methodically checking his facts.
   Throw in a fair degree of academic rivalry, flirtatiousness, sex, and a farcical misappropriation of historical 'truths' for an acutely-observed, occasionally vicious display of Stoppardian wit which conveys complicated and serious themes.

As the audience sees the reality of events unfold in the nineteenth century scenes (with the crucial clues on the table in both time frames), they watch the impending car crash that is Bernard's ambition as he jumps to the wrong conclusions over and over again. Inevitably, the tiniest detail is responsible for tripping Bernard up after he has already gone very embarrassingly public with his Bonking Byron Shot Bard discovery. A simple dahlia proves that Byron's duelling rival was never killed, leading to Bernard's pained, exasperated and shell-shocked realisation that he's been "fucked by a dahlia".
          As the Art vs Science debate, character hubris and sexual complications come to a head, Stoppard skilfully ends the play on a calm, sensitive, incredibly touching note of impending tragedy. 
 
The brilliant Thomasina, now on the eve of her 17th birthday, with a fantastically promising future ahead of her, dances with Septimus. Sharing the stage (or 'doubled in time' as Stoppard puts it) are Hannah and Gus (who at first glance, the audience thinks, could be Augustus from the nineteenth century scenes). 
           There is no actual time travel or awareness of the other characters; just a sense of occupying the same space, of history's mark. Thomasina invites Septimus to her room, though in a sensitive and erotically-charged scene he declines, saying "I cannot…I must not…I will not", before warning her to be careful of the flame of her candle when she returns to her room. She settles for another dance with him. 
Arcadia, Tom Stoppard, Rufus Sewell, Septimus, Thomasina
 
Thomasina and Septimus (Rufus Sewell) in the National Theatre's Arcadia
 
      However, just as we know that Bernard's ambition was doomed because of the facts seen in the earlier time frame, we now know from the modern time frame that Thomasina ~ so full of life at this moment ~  is doomed to burn to death within minutes of their dance ending. We know that all that her future held is lost and that Septimus will spend the rest of his life in madness as the hermit in the garden, futilely trying to replicate the groundbreaking formula which she had so casually mentioned shortly before her death (on the second law of thermodynamics: how eventually all heat energy is lost and everything, including the Earth, must die).
   As the two pairs of figures dance, the audience is left with a feeling of regret for time lost, that "Et in Arcadia ego" ~ "Even in Arcadia [paradise], there am I [death]".
Hugo Weaving, Cannes 1994 for Priscilla
 

Hugo Weaving content: 

Hugo Weaving's Bernard Nightingale is a headstrong, tactless, egotistical buffoon, driven equally by his lusts for fame and sex (Hannah: "Sex and literature. Literature and sex…like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of them is always sex"). Stoppard mainly uses this character as a means of parodying the academic world and as a challenging contrast to Hannah's ordered life. To Hannah, he is "like some exasperating child pedalling its tricycle towards the edge of a cliff"; to the eighteen-year-old Chloe, he is "Bouncy on his feet…full of sexual energy".
 
    However, as Bernard's superb Art vs Science debate (see Classic Scenes ) becomes more impassioned, Stoppard gives the actor playing him the opportunity to show him in a more serious light. In this scene, Weaving is fully able to carry the audience along with him, even though, at his ruthlessly impassioned best, Bernard is still seen to be without regard for others' feelings and his debating skills have become tools for a verbal lynching of the haplessly scientific Valentine (Paul Goddard). Even when Valentine leaves shaking and close to tears, Bernard, in all his emotional superiority, fails to see it as anything more than a failed game ("It's no fun when it's not among pros, is it?") and naturally steers the conversation with Hannah into an offer of casual sex.
     Bernard Nightingale gives Hugo Weaving the scope for displaying wonderful comic skills with a character who is an undeniable, grandstanding bastard, yet still has enough charm and passion to make him seem redemptive.
 

Key scenes:
 
  • Trying (vainly) to cover up that he is the same Bernard Nightingale who publicly trashed Hannah's book on Lady Caroline Lamb
  • Kissing Hannah while in the freefall exhilaration of finding the proof to make his name. Being slapped by her when knowingly winding her up that when Chloe seduced him, he "saw something between her legs that made me think of you" (see Classic Scenes ).
  • The Bonking Byron Shot Bard lecture turning into a viciously personal Art vs Science debate with Valentine (see Classic Scenes).
  • The awful realisation that his impatience and thirst for fame has meant that he is going to be publicly "fucked by a dahlia" yet desperately trying to find a loophole and use his charm on Hannah.
  • Bernard's ignominious exit, tail firmly between legs, after being caught by Lady Croom (who also fancies him) in a compromising position with her 18 year old daughter; then brusquely rejecting Chloe's overblown romantic offer to elope with him with a "no you bloody well won't. Of course not. What for?"
Hugo Weaving, Arcadia, Tom Stoppard, Bernard Nightingale long