Interview: 'It's All Quite Brain-Melty In A Wonderful Way': Actor Isis Hainsworth On Missing Tom Stoppard And Returning To ARCADIA In The West End

Fresh from an Olivier Award-nominated performance at The Old Vic, Isis Hainsworth is preparing to step back into the role of Thomasina Coverley for the highly anticipated West End transfer of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Speaking to BroadwayWorld, Hainsworth reflected on revisiting one of modern theatre's most beloved characters, the enduring brilliance of Stoppard's writing, and why the play continues to captivate audiences more than three decades after its premiere.

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You received an Olivier Award nomination for your performance as Thomasina Coverley at The Old Vic. What was your reaction when you were asked to reprise the role for the West End transfer?

I was so excited. I absolutely love this production and I love Thomasina. I was just really, really, really, happy and excited to get to play her again. I also knew during the first run there was bits that I wanted to work on. Now we're back in the rehearsal room, I get to work on all those little bits again, which is nice. I think the production has evolved and kept all of its loveliness, but hopefully there's just extra now.

Having lived with Thomasina through The Old Vic run, what new aspects of her character have you discovered during rehearsals for this transfer? 

I think she's just become more embodied in me. When we first started, I was wary of doing stereotypical child acting. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make her feel as real as possible. With time, she’s become more and more real inside my body.

 

Thomasina is often described as a genius ahead of her time. How do you find, what do you find most inspiring about her as a young woman?

Thomasina’s thirst for knowledge has really inspired me, she's so driven by wanting to know and wanting to discover, which I find an admirable trait. She's also just the loveliest thing. I just want to scoop her up and give her a hug, really. Being a woman at that time or being a young girl at that time was so difficult, though being a woman at any time is quite hard. She's got this amazing mind but she knows that one day she's going to be married off and probably her genius isn't going to be nurtured in a way that it could be today.

Despite her extraordinary intellect, Thomasine is also young, deeply insightful and curious about life. How do you balance those different sides of her character in performance?

Do you know, it's just so fun. I just absolutely love it getting to release my inner child. And she is mercurial. She's eager for knowledge but then she's a 13-year-old again. It's so fun for me to play. I feel like there's a strange part of my inner child that just gets to come out and play, which is lovely for an actor, I think I'm lucky.

Arcadia explores vast themes - knowledge, discovery, chaos, order, mathematics, science, love, desire and loss. Which of the play's paths resonate most strongly with you personally?

I am not a maths or science girly. I'm also dyslexic, so it was not my thing at school. The humanity in the play is the thing that resonates most with me, the relationships between the characters. And everyone's just wanting to matter, either to each other or to the society that they live in, but they all just want to be seen and be loved by the people around them. That's really a lovely thing.

Arcadia is frequently cited as one of the greatest plays of the modern era. What makes Stoppard's writing so rewarding for actors, or particularly for you?

Stoppard is just so clever. I think it does make you feel like you're a little bit cleverer than you were, before you started getting to say those words. I don't know if that's true, but it's a nice feeling. Whilst rehearsing last time I enjoyed working out all the little corners and the little reveals. Stoppard is so smart that you could probably read the play 100 times and every time you will find a new discovery. There'll be another thing that you didn't notice the first time which reveals a new thought. Stoppard is so good at writing the humanness as well and the beauty.

This production marks the first West End opening of a Tom Stoppard play since his passing in 2025. Does that add an extra sense of responsibility, or significance to this production?

I feel somewhat responsible for carrying his legacy, to make something that he would be proud of. He's so missed in our rehearsal room. I feel like he's there with us anyway, in a way. We would all love him to just be there and be able to have him in the room with us. It's a really special thing to get to do this play at this time. I feel the responsibility to make it as good as possible for him.

If you could ask Tom Stoppard one question about Arcadia, what would it be?

There's been so many times in the room where I'm like, Tom, what does it mean? I would love to know why he wrote it and where the inspiration came from and where the idea came from.

Stoppard’s plays are renowned for their intellectual complexity. How do you keep Thomasina relatable?

I hope she's relatable, when you read her on the page, it's so intimidating. But because I'm playing her, there's so much of like me in there, and I'm just a person, a normal, non-genius girl and hopefully there's lots of me mixed in with her. She's the most beautifully written character. I think, if you wanted to, you could make her really unrelatable. But she's got all of these really human traits, you know, she wants to be loved, she wants to have relationships and a normal life.

You collaborated with Carrie Cracknell on this acclaimed production. What is distinctive about her approach as a director?

I love Carrie, I think she's an absolutely wonderful director. She creates such a warm, exciting room. The people she casts are so generous to each other and that makes the room feel so safe and it means everyone can explore as much as humanly possible. It is such a special thing to feel safe enough with the group of people that you're with to play and to try something and sometimes have it not work, but that isn't a bad thing. Carrie is so giving to everyone, very generous and will go over the work until it's right. I'm very lucky to work with her. If she'll work with me, I'll work with her whenever she wants to work with me.

Do you think audiences need any prior knowledge of the scientific or literary references before seeing the play?

I think you don't need to know any of those things, but I do think you might get a little bit more from it if you do. It's fine not knowing anything and it's also really rewarding if you do know the play. We do lots of explaining in the play, so it's not a need or a must at all, I think. And hopefully you'll come away from the play feeling like you know a little bit about all of those things. It is all quite brain-melty in a wonderful way.

Which line from what Arcadia did you find yourself thinking about most often?

I love lots of Valentine's lines, actually. He says, “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. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.”

I also love my rice pudding line about the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the line about the philosophy of scientific determinism (Laplace's demon concept) "If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.”

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