An Introduction to the Play

Right: Poster for the play by Richard Boxall.

Click on the poster for an enlargement.

The gardens at Sidley Park are being transformed from their eighteenth century symmetrical style into the newly fashionable 'picturesque' style of the early nineteenth century, a romantic wild landscape of irregular trees and jagged rocks.

"...English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the Grand Tour."

The transformation of the garden is mirrored in a transformation of science occuring through the development of thermodynamics, which is alluded to throughout the play. The elegantly ordered perpetual universe of Isaac Newton is being challenged by the discoveries of Carnot in France, which ultimately suggest the universe is running down into disorder. It is a transformation that requires present day concepts and techniques to reveal it fully: the science of fractals, miraculously anticipated by Thomasina in 1809, must wait until the advent of computers before her genius can be revealed. The new theories of chaos, studied by a later family member, Valentine, seem to suggest a new approach to understanding.

"It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing...a door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. Its the best possible time to be alive..."

However, not all share his vision. Bernard Nightingale, an impossibly conceited academic, is researching Byron at Sidley Park. He has no time for science:

"A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe."

Through his play, Stoppard succeeds in merging science with human concerns and ideals. He leaves us with the view that if the universe is an apparently doomed machine, then whilst we are alive, we might as well dance.

Notes on the Original London Production