Tom Stoppard: An Brilliant Playwright Who Invariably Elevated the Atmosphere of the Theatre

All the great dramatists push the boundaries of theatre. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter did it in their unique fashion. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently esoteric themes – from chaotic systems to ethical thought and the enigma of the mind – and transform them into witty, creative and regularly emotional dramas. Theatre, Laurence Olivier noted, is a significant glamorizer of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his talent to bring concepts to life.

Initial Encounter

Fortunately for me to come across Stoppard in his early career. That was wholly thanks to Philip French, who, in addition to being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to present a mini-speech on two radio plays by a back then obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an impoverished writer ran up an skyrocketing taxi bill. And in If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to get in touch with his wife who was the voice of the time. I was impressed by the cleverness of both plays and eventually met their youthful author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a dismissive first-night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he stayed impeccably courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he understood the ways of the journalistic world.

Cerebral Virtuoso and Emotional Depth

From the beginning, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by individuals and storyline. But, just as we later came to understand that Pinter was always a political dramatist, so we eventually came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s brainy concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was acclaimed for its brilliance in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings reveal that it is about how we are all prey of chance circumstances resulting in our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, remarking, “In Tom’s plays, the dialogue is all. The word is beating back the quiet, beating back the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive blend of conceptual boldness and heartfelt depth was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big moral issue: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions obeyed an universal, divinely inspired law. Not your usual dramatic theme, but here the topic of a talk being developed by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the suffering of a failing marriage and the perils of a unraveling society in which astronauts were brawling on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Research and Affecting Breakthrough

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also carefully researched. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, encountering him on the entrance of the London Library where he was gripping a pile of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he answered.

With time, the feeling of his plays became increasingly evident. The key moment likely came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to reproduction. It asks a multitude of issues such as whether any civic duty is the consequence of individual madness and whether concepts such as justice and patriotism exist beyond our perceptions of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense awareness of the joy of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with fatalism and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, works because it is intensely emotional. Ideas and feeling seamlessly merge in a moment where a brilliant young girl, Thomasina, bemoans the loss of past civilisations to which her teacher replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs seen briefly and overlooked will have their time again.” And that is just what happens, in that Thomasina’s innovative rethinking of the Newton's world outlasts her tragically abbreviated life.

Questioning the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s genius as a dramatist was seldom doubted. What was debated, especially in the early years, were his skepticism about the efficacy of theatre: something he often talked about in discussions. “I used to feel out on a limb,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a shit if you weren’t writing about the Vietnam War or housing. Now I have no compunction about that. To avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it avoids serious topics.”

I think he was completely wrong about that since Oscar Wilde's work offers a continuous critique on finance, marriage, values, status, the weakening of the aristocracy and the ascendancy of trade. But Stoppard contradicted his own argument by writing a collection of works that grapple to great effect with the abuse of individual freedoms by dictatorial governments. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Eastern Bloc activist incorrectly pronounced insane and imprisoned in a chamber with an genuine lunatic who imagines himself in charge of an musical ensemble. It was astonishing both to see the entire London Symphony Orchestra on the stage and to observe Stoppard exposing the cruel absurdities of Soviet oppression with dark humour. As I wrote at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and rigidity with a