by Kate Atkinson                                                    Directed by Kit Thacker "Abandonment" - performed to critical acclaim in London and Edinburgh, hinges on the collision between two periods. In the present we see Elizabeth, a single historian moving into an old mansion where she is constantly invaded by friends and family. But Elizabeth also disturbs the ghosts of the house’s past occupants, especially Agnes, an 1860’s governess who was seduced by her Darwinian employer. As the play proceeds, echoes between past and present multiply feverishly. Like Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Abandonment is a “delicious mixture of comedy and Chaos Theory, reminding us that the past is not as far away as we might think” (as one London reviewer put it).