Dartmouth's Oxford Connection

Samuel West did a marvelous turn as Septimus Hodge, a charismatic tutor to Amanda jones '97's precocious teen Thomasina Coverly in last summer's production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia While ostensibly a tale about human nature that alternates between scenes set in the 1800s and present-day England, Arcadia is also about "heat and attraction sexual, mathematical, physical," said the British star of acclaimed films Howard's End (1992) and Carrington (1994). In 1993 the 31-year old West had played the role of Valentine the mathematician m Arcadia's first run at the London National Theater. West returned to what he calls "a most important play in the history of theater" when director James Loehlin, an old Oxford University chum who is currently an assistant professor of drama at the College, made him a Dartmouth offer he could not refuse.

Jones and West