Isis Hainsworth as Thomasina
Arcadia
Old Vic Theatre, London
January 2026
Photo by Manuel Harlan
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
Arcadia premiered at the National Theatre in London in 1993 to great acclaim, followed by revivals in the West End and the Lincoln Centre in New York in 1994, winning the Olivier, Evening Standard and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards. As we record this episode a wonderful new production is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year.
I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell. I am thrilled to be able to meet Carrie because she is responsible for directing several of the most memorable theatre productions I have ever seen, including her renditions of Medea and The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre, which were both graced by stunning performances by Helen McCrory, and which inspired this podcast’s episodes on those plays.
Carrie Cracknell
Carrie Cracknell is one of the finest directors at work in Britain today. Her production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia opened at the Old Vic Theatre in London in January 2026, and transferred with a slightly altered cast to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End in June 2026.
Her wonderful productions of Medea and The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre inspired our episodes on those two plays. Her other directing credits include the Grapes of Wrath, Julie and Blurred Lines at the National Theatre, Portia Coughlin and Oil at the Almeida, Macbeth and A Doll’s House at the Young Vic, and Birdland with Andrew Scott at the Royal Court.
She has also directed opera at the English National Opera and the Met in New York, as well as a feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Her most recent outing was a typically clear-sighted and moving production of Fran Kranz’s unflinching look at restorative justice, Mass, at the Donmar Warehouse.
Carrie recommended Care by Alexander Zeldin.
The Footnotes that supplement our episode on Tom Stoppard’s dramatic masterpiece, Arcadia, include a summary of ideas woven into the fabric of the play, including garden design, Fermat’s Last Theorem, Iterated Algorithms, Fractals, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Chaos Theory.
115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
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