Arcadia Tickets

In the present day, scholar Hannah Jarvis and the odiously self-satisfied Bernard Nightingale are sifting through the same estate’s archives, piecing together a mystery that echoes those very events from 200 years before. What did happen in 1809? What did Byron actually do? Can the past ever be truly known? And what does any of it tell us about the forces — mathematical, emotional, entropic — that govern everything?

Widely regarded as Sir Tom Stoppard’s greatest play, Arcadia was described by the Royal Institution in 2006 as one of the greatest science-related literary works ever written. It premiered at the National Theatre in 1993 winning the Olivier Award for Best Play, was last revived in London in 2009 at this same Duke of York’s Theatre, and now returns to the West End — with particular poignancy, following Stoppard’s death in November 2025 at the age of 88 — in the Olivier Award-nominated production from The Old Vic, directed by Carrie Cracknell (A Doll’s House, The Grapes of Wrath).

Cracknell’s production, which sold out its entire Old Vic run and received two Olivier nominations (Best Revival and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Isis Hainsworth), makes its West End transfer with the Duke of York’s Theatre specially reconfigured in-the-round — placing the audience all around the circular revolving stage, beneath two glowing ellipses and a canopy of celestial spheres. Producer Sonia Friedman said: “Bringing Arcadia to the West End feels less like a revival and more like a responsibility.”