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Every one of the great dramatists broaden the limits of drama. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter did it in their distinct way. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly specialized subjects – from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the enigma of awareness – and turn them into clever, imaginative and often moving dramas. The stage, Sir Laurence Olivier remarked, is a great embellisher of thought. Stoppard confirmed that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Initial Introduction

I was lucky enough to come across Stoppard in his early career. That was wholly thanks to Philip French, who, besides being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he asked me to give a mini-speech on two radio plays by a at that time obscure writer described as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an broke writer accumulated an ever escalating taxi-fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to contact his wife who was the speaking clock. I was captivated by the ingenuity of both plays and had the chance 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 dismissive opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I now love – he stayed impeccably courteous. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he grasped the ways of our world.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Heartfelt Depth

From the beginning, Stoppard was celebrated as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by concepts as much as by character and plot. But, just as we later came to understand that Pinter was invariably a political dramatist, so we finally came to see that there was an undercurrent of feeling to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was commended for its brilliance in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but multiple watchings indicate that it is about how we are all casualties of arbitrary circumstances causing our demise. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an quintessential Stoppard actor, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is pushing back the quiet, beating back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even heartbreaking.”

The distinctive fusion of conceptual boldness and heartfelt depth was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that asked a significant ethical dilemma: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether principles obeyed an universal, divinely inspired law. Not your typical theatrical topic, but here the topic of a talk being written by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the suffering of a fractured marriage and the dangers of a disintegrating society in which astronauts were scrapping on the moon and a former minister of agriculture had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Research and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were open to plays about complex ideas. His work was also thoroughly researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, running into him on the entrance of the a library in London where he was gripping a mound of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he answered.

With the passage of time, the feeling of his plays became more and more visible. The key moment likely came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than most of his plays to revival. It asks a multitude of issues such as whether any social obligation is the consequence of individual madness and whether notions such as fairness and national pride exist independent of our understanding of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a heightened awareness of the joy of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses fatalism and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, works because it is intensely touching. Thoughts and feeling seamlessly coincide in a segment where a exceptional young girl, Thomasina, mourns the loss of past civilisations to which her teacher responds: “Mathematical discoveries seen briefly and overlooked will have their time again.” And that is exactly what occurs, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary rethinking of the Newton's world survives her unfortunately abbreviated life.

Debating the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a playwright was infrequently challenged. What was discussed, especially in the initial period, were his reservations about the effectiveness of theatre: something he frequently talked about in discussions. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a jerk if you weren’t writing about the Vietnam War or social housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was completely wrong about that since Wilde’s play offers a running commentary on money, matrimony, morals, status, the fall of the upper class and the ascendancy of commerce. But Stoppard contradicted his own argument by writing a collection of works that grapple to great effect with the violation of civil liberties by dictatorial systems. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first staged at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Eastern Bloc activist falsely declared insane and locked in a cell with an authentic madman who imagines himself in charge of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the full London Symphony Orchestra on the stage and to witness Stoppard unmasking the harsh absurdities of Russian tyranny with black comedy. As I wrote at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and strictness with a