The production is currently booking to Sept. 12. It will replace Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, currently running to May 16.
Arcadia, to be directed by David Leveaux, will feature a cast that includes the playwright's son, Ed Stoppard as well as Nancy Carroll, Jessie Cave, Neil Pearson and Dan Stevens.
In publicity materials, the play is described as "a dazzling, witty masterpiece of misunderstanding and quest for knowledge, resonating across centuries." The play is set in two time periods: In April 1809, at a stately home in Derbyshire, a gifted pupil called Thomasina proposes a startling theory, beyond her comprehension. All around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries. Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard, are piecing together puzzling clues, curiously recalling those events of 1809, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.
Leveaux has previously directed revivals of Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Donmar Warehouse in 1999 and Jumpers at the National's Lyttelton Theatre in 2003. His other Broadway directorial credits include transfers of his London stagings of A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1984 and Electra (first seen at the Donmar Warehouse) in 1998, as well as new productions for Broadway of Anna Christie in 1993, Betrayal in 2000, Nine in 2003, Fiddler on the Roof in 2004, The Glass Menagerie in 2005 and Cyrano de Bergerac in 2007.
Ed Stoppard was last seen on the London stage as DH Lawrence in Amy Rosenthal's On the Rocks in 2008. Other London acting credits include playing the title role in English Touring Theatre's production of Hamlet (seen at the New Ambassadors Theatre in 2006), and Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie in 2007. Nancy Carroll has been seen at the National Theatre in The Enchantment, The Man of Mode, The Voysey Inheritance, The False Servant and The Talking Cure. Her RSC credits include Henry IV Parts 1 and 2; As You Like It; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and The Winter's Tale.
Jessie Cave will be seen as Lavender Bloom in the upcoming Harry Potter feature, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," due for release in July 2009. Other appearances include roles in "Summerhill," shown on CBBC in 2008, and "Inkheart."
Neil Pearson is best known for his roles in TV's "Drop the Dead Donkey" and "Between the Lines." He has also been seen in such films as "Fever Pitch" and "Bridget Jones's Diary." He was last seen on stage in a touring revival of Pinter's Old Times in 2006.
Dan Stevens was most recently seen onstage in the National Theatre's revival of Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. Other London theatre roles include appearances in Coward's Hay Fever and The Vortex, both directed by Peter Hall, and regionally in The Romans in Britain, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It. TV appearances include "Sense and Sensibility," "Marple: Nemesis," "Maxwell," "Dracula," "The Line of Beauty" and "Frankenstein." On film he has appeared in "Hilde."
Further casting details are to be announced.
To book tickets, contact the box office at 08712975454 or visit www.ambassadortickets.com.
