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All the finest dramatists extend the boundaries of theatre. Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their distinct way. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly esoteric subjects – ranging from chaotic systems to ethical thought and the puzzle of awareness – and transform them into clever, creative and regularly emotional plays. The stage, the actor Olivier noted, is a great glamoriser of thought. Stoppard affirmed that with his capacity to animate intellectual concepts.

Initial Introduction

I had the good fortune to discover Stoppard early on. That was entirely because of a man named Philip French, who, aside from being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he invited me to give a short talk on two broadcast plays by a at that time obscure writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an impoverished writer accumulated an constantly rising taxi bill. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to contact his wife who was the speaking clock. I was captivated by the creativity of both plays and got to meet their youthful author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a sniffy opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was impeccably courteous. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he grasped the nature of our world.

Cerebral Gymnast and Emotional Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by individuals and plot. But, just as we belatedly came to recognise that Pinter was invariably a political dramatist, so we finally came to see that there was an depth of emotion to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was praised for its ingenuity in crafting a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again reveal that it is about how we are all casualties of random circumstances leading to our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, remarking, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is beating back the stillness, resisting the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so touching and even heartbreaking.”

The characteristic fusion of intellectual audacity and emotional substance was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, in the end, was a play that posed a big moral issue: whether societal ethics was a conditioned response to history or whether moral sanctions adhered to an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your typical dramatic theme, but here the focus of a speech being written by the play’s hero, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the pain of a failing marriage and the risks of a unraveling society in which astronauts were brawling on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Meticulous Preparation and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also thoroughly studied. I remember, prior to Jumpers, meeting him on the steps of the London Library where he was holding a stack of books that reached up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he replied.

With the passage of time, the feeling of his plays became more and more evident. The turning point arguably came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to revival. It poses a whole host of issues such as whether any public commitment is the consequence of private derangement and whether ideas such as fairness and national pride exist beyond our understanding of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a acute realization of the joy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores fatalism and volition, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, works because it is deeply emotional. Concepts and emotion perfectly come together in a scene where a exceptional teenager, Thomasina, mourns the loss of past civilisations to which her instructor replies: “Scientific insights seen briefly and lost to view will have their moment.” And that is exactly what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking reinterpretation of the classical physics survives her sadly cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s genius as a playwright was seldom questioned. What was debated, particularly in the beginning, were his doubts about the efficacy of art: something he frequently discussed in discussions. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or housing. Now I have no qualms about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is important but it addresses no major issues.”

I feel he was completely wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a continuous critique on money, marriage, values, status, the weakening of the upper class and the rise of trade. But Stoppard weakened his own point by writing a collection of works that deal to significant impact with the abuse of human rights by oppressive systems. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Soviet critic incorrectly declared insane and locked in a room with an authentic lunatic who thinks he is in charge of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the whole orchestra on stage and to observe Stoppard exposing the cruel absurdities of Soviet oppression with dark humour. As I wrote at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and inflexibility with a