Tom Stoppard: A Masterful Dramatist Who Invariably Heightened the Energy of the Room

Every one of the outstanding dramatists broaden the frontiers of drama. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter succeeded in their distinct way. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently esoteric topics – ranging from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the puzzle of the mind – and transform them into humorous, inventive and frequently touching theatrical works. Theatre, the actor Olivier remarked, is a significant glamoriser of ideas. Stoppard affirmed that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Early Introduction

Fortunately for me to discover Stoppard in his early career. That was entirely because of Philip French, who, aside from being a cinema critic, was also a British Broadcasting Corporation producer. In 1966 he invited me to deliver a short talk on two audio dramas by a then unknown writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an broke writer accumulated an constantly rising taxi bill. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to reach his wife who was the speaking clock. I was impressed by the creativity of both plays and got to meet their youthful author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was impeccably courteous. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he knew the nature of our world.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Heartfelt Depth

From the beginning, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by thoughts as much as by personality and plot. But, just as we eventually came to understand that Pinter was invariably a political dramatist, so we finally came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was praised for its ingenuity in constructing a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings indicate that it is about how we are all victims of arbitrary circumstances resulting in our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had portrayed Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an quintessential Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is pushing back the silence, beating back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even sorrowful.”

The characteristic combination of intellectual audacity and feeling was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that raised a significant moral issue: whether public morals was a conditioned response to history or whether moral sanctions adhered to an universal, God-given law. Not your typical theatrical topic, but here the topic of a speech being prepared by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one understood that it was also about the anguish of a fractured marriage and the perils of a unraveling society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a ex- minister of agriculture had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Meticulous Research and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were receptive to plays about complex ideas. His work was also thoroughly investigated. I remember, just before Jumpers, running into him on the stairs of the a library in London where he was holding a stack of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he answered.

With the passage of time, the feeling of his plays became ever more evident. The breakthrough likely came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than the majority of his plays to reproduction. It raises a plethora of questions such as whether any public commitment is the result of individual madness and whether concepts such as fairness and patriotism exist independent of our understanding of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a intense consciousness of the joy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores fatalism and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, functions because it is profoundly emotional. Thoughts and feeling seamlessly merge in a segment where a exceptional teenager, Thomasina, bemoans the demise of past civilizations to which her instructor replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs glimpsed and forgotten will have their moment.” And that is just what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the Newtonian universe outlasts her tragically abbreviated life.

Debating the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was seldom questioned. What was contested, particularly in the early years, were his doubts about the power of art: something he often explored 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 social housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it addresses no major issues.”

I believe he was totally wrong about that since Wilde’s play provides a ongoing observation on money, matrimony, morals, class, the decline of the nobility and the ascendancy of commerce. But Stoppard undermined his own point by writing a collection of works that deal to significant impact with the violation of civil liberties by authoritarian governments. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Eastern Bloc activist incorrectly declared insane and locked in a room with an authentic psychiatric patient who thinks he is in command of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the full LSO on stage and to witness Stoppard exposing the harsh ridiculousness of communist repression with black comedy. As I commented at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and strictness with a