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All the finest playwrights extend the limits of theatre. Playwrights like Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their own manner. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently esoteric subjects – ranging from chaotic systems to moral philosophy and the enigma of consciousness – and transform them into witty, imaginative and often emotional theatrical works. Theatre, the actor Olivier once said, is a great embellisher of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to make ideas dance.

Initial Introduction

I had the good fortune to discover Stoppard in his early career. That was wholly due to Philip French, who, in addition to being a film critic, was also a British Broadcasting Corporation producer. In 1966 he requested that I to present a mini-speech on two radio plays by a then unknown writer called Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an destitute writer racked up an constantly rising taxi bill. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to get in touch with his wife who was the speaking clock. I was captivated by the creativity of both plays and got to meet their emerging author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a sniffy opening night review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I now love – he remained perfectly gracious. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he grasped the ways of our world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by character and narrative. But, just as we eventually came to realise that Pinter was invariably a political playwright, so we finally came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was praised for its brilliance in creating a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but multiple watchings reveal that it is about how we are all prey of arbitrary circumstances resulting in our extinction. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the dialogue is all. The word is resisting the quiet, pushing back the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even heartbreaking.”

The characteristic combination of daring ideas and heartfelt depth was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a major ethical dilemma: whether societal ethics was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions adhered to an absolute, divinely inspired law. Not your average dramatic theme, but here the topic of a talk being written by the play’s hero, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the anguish of a broken marriage and the dangers of a disintegrating society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a former agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Research and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he had in common with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were open to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also carefully studied. I remember, just before Jumpers, running into him on the steps of the London Library where he was holding a stack of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he replied.

With time, the feeling of his plays became increasingly evident. The key moment likely came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to revival. It raises a whole host of issues such as whether any civic duty is the outcome of private derangement and whether ideas such as justice and patriotism exist outside our perceptions of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a acute awareness of the bliss of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses determinism and volition, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, functions because it is profoundly touching. Thoughts and sentiment seamlessly coincide in a moment where a exceptional young girl, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past civilizations to which her instructor responds: “Mathematical discoveries seen briefly and overlooked will have their time again.” And that is just what occurs, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary revision of the classical physics outlasts her unfortunately cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s genius as a playwright was rarely challenged. What was contested, particularly in the beginning, were his skepticism about the power of drama: something he often discussed in discussions. “I used to feel out on a limb,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a jerk if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or social housing. Now I have no qualms about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was totally wrong about that since Wilde’s play offers a continuous critique on money, marriage, ethics, status, the weakening of the upper class and the dominance of business. But Stoppard contradicted his own position by writing a series of works that deal to significant impact with the misuse of individual freedoms by authoritarian governments. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first staged at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Eastern Bloc activist falsely diagnosed crazy and imprisoned in a chamber with an authentic lunatic who thinks he is in control of an orchestra. It was startling both to see the whole London Symphony Orchestra on the stage and to witness Stoppard revealing the brutal absurdities of Soviet oppression with grim wit. As I noted at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and rigidity with a