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All the finest playwrights extend the boundaries of drama. Playwrights like Beckett and Pinter did it in their own way. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly obscure themes – ranging from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the enigma of the mind – and transform them into humorous, creative and regularly moving theatrical works. Theatre, the actor Olivier noted, is a great embellisher of thought. Stoppard demonstrated that with his capacity to bring concepts to life.

Initial Introduction

I was lucky enough to encounter Stoppard early on. That was entirely because of a man named Philip French, who, besides being a movie reviewer, was also a the BBC programme maker. In 1966 he invited me to present a brief lecture on two broadcast plays by a then little-known writer referred to as 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 get in touch with his wife who was the time announcement service. I was struck by the ingenuity of both plays and eventually met their emerging author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he stayed exceptionally courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he understood the nature of the media.

Cerebral Gymnast and Heartfelt Depth

From the start, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by thoughts as much as by character and storyline. But, just as we eventually came to recognise that Pinter was always a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s brainy concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was acclaimed for its brilliance in constructing 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 resulting in our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is pushing back the silence, resisting the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even tragic.”

The distinctive combination of conceptual boldness and feeling was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big philosophical question: whether societal ethics was a learned behavior to history or whether moral sanctions obeyed an absolute, God-given law. Not your average subject for a play, but here the focus of a speech being written by the play’s protagonist, 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 disintegrating society in which space travelers were brawling on the moon and a previous minister of agriculture had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Research and Emotional Revelation

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

With the years, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly evident. The breakthrough likely came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to restaging. It asks a whole host of questions such as whether any civic duty is the outcome of individual madness and whether notions such as fairness and patriotism exist outside our understanding of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a heightened awareness of the ecstasy 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 host of other things, works because it is deeply touching. Thoughts and feeling flawlessly come together in a moment where a exceptional young girl, Thomasina, laments the disappearance of past civilisations to which her tutor replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs caught sight of and forgotten will have their renaissance.” And that is exactly what occurs, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the Newtonian universe outlasts her unfortunately abbreviated life.

Questioning the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was rarely questioned. What was discussed, especially in the beginning, were his reservations about the power of drama: something he frequently discussed in conversations. “I used to feel out on a limb,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or social housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it addresses no major issues.”

I believe he was completely wrong about that since the play by Wilde offers a running commentary on finance, marriage, values, social class, the weakening of the aristocracy and the rise of business. But Stoppard undermined his own point by writing a number of works that deal to great effect with the abuse of civil liberties by oppressive systems. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Soviet critic wrongly diagnosed mad and locked in a chamber with an authentic psychiatric patient who thinks he is in command of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the full London Symphony Orchestra on stage and to witness Stoppard exposing the cruel illogicalities of Russian tyranny with black comedy. As I commented at the time, “iron is met with wit and strictness with a