I honestly can't tell if it will be meaningful in either a plot or emotional sense without prior knowledge/experience. (Try it, then return and report.)
The play parallels two stories, (past) a girl genius and her tutor, and (present) the academics studying them and coming to some wrong, and some right conclusions. They're both in the same house at different times, and literally pass each other by onstage. The girl was way ahead of her time, and might have been a world-changing mathematician had she not died at the age of sixteen, in a fire. The other thing that's important for the story is that there are two young boys in each timeline, played by the same actor. The one in the present doesn't speak, and in the play we never learn why.
The play is all about how everything is fragile and impermanent and unknowable, and how in a broader sense that doesn't matter. If you've read Connie Willis's story "Fire Watch," it's extremely similar in tone and theme.
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SPOILERS FOR ARCADIA
Date: 2010-12-31 09:10 pm (UTC)The play parallels two stories, (past) a girl genius and her tutor, and (present) the academics studying them and coming to some wrong, and some right conclusions. They're both in the same house at different times, and literally pass each other by onstage. The girl was way ahead of her time, and might have been a world-changing mathematician had she not died at the age of sixteen, in a fire. The other thing that's important for the story is that there are two young boys in each timeline, played by the same actor. The one in the present doesn't speak, and in the play we never learn why.
The play is all about how everything is fragile and impermanent and unknowable, and how in a broader sense that doesn't matter. If you've read Connie Willis's story "Fire Watch," it's extremely similar in tone and theme.