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Every one of the outstanding dramatists extend the frontiers of theatre. Beckett and Pinter did it in their distinct manner. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly specialized subjects – from chaos theory to philosophical ethics and the enigma of the mind – and transform them into witty, inventive and frequently moving plays. Drama, the actor Olivier once said, is a powerful glamorizer of thought. Stoppard affirmed that with his talent to bring concepts to life.

Initial Introduction

I was lucky enough to encounter Stoppard at an early stage. That was entirely because of Philip French, who, aside from being a movie reviewer, was also a the BBC programme maker. In 1966 he invited me to deliver a short talk on two radio plays by a then little-known writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an destitute writer racked up an skyrocketing cab fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to contact his wife who was the time announcement service. I was captivated by the ingenuity of both plays and got to meet their young author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a critical first-night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he remained impeccably gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he understood the nature of our world.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Emotional Substance

From the beginning, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was motivated by thoughts as much as by individuals and plot. But, just as we belatedly came to realise that Pinter was always 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 creating a drama out of two secondary characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again reveal that it is about how we are all victims of random circumstances leading to our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is resisting the stillness, pushing back the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so touching and even tragic.”

The characteristic fusion of intellectual audacity and feeling was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that asked a significant philosophical question: whether public morals was a conditioned response to history or whether principles obeyed an universal, God-given law. Not your average dramatic theme, but here the focus of a speech being prepared by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one realised that it was also about the pain of a fractured marriage and the risks of a disintegrating society in which astronauts were fighting on the moon and a former minister of agriculture had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Preparation and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he had in common with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were open to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also meticulously researched. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, encountering him on the stairs 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 responded.

With time, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly apparent. The breakthrough arguably came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to reproduction. It poses a whole host of questions such as whether any public commitment is the outcome of personal instability and whether ideas such as fairness and national pride exist outside our views of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a heightened realization of the bliss of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores fatalism and free will, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is profoundly emotional. Concepts and emotion flawlessly come together in a scene where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, bemoans the loss of past cultures to which her teacher replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs glimpsed and overlooked will have their moment.” And that is precisely what happens, in that Thomasina’s innovative reinterpretation of the Newtonian universe survives her sadly truncated life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was seldom questioned. What was contested, particularly in the early years, were his reservations about the effectiveness of drama: something he often talked about in discussions. “I used to feel alone,” 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 compunction about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is important but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde offers a running commentary on money, matrimony, values, social class, the weakening of the upper class and the ascendancy of trade. But Stoppard weakened his own argument by writing a number of works that deal to great effect with the violation of civil liberties by dictatorial 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 imprisoned in a room with an genuine madman who imagines himself in command of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the entire London Symphony Orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard revealing the cruel illogicalities of communist repression with grim wit. As I wrote at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and strictness with a