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Every one of the great playwrights extend the boundaries of theatre. Beckett and Pinter did it in their distinct way. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently specialized themes – from the science of chaos to philosophical ethics and the mystery of the mind – and turn them into witty, imaginative and regularly emotional theatrical works. The stage, the actor Olivier remarked, is a great glamorizer of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Initial Introduction

I was lucky enough to encounter Stoppard early on. That was wholly thanks to a man named Philip French, who, besides being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to give a short talk on two radio plays by a back then obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an destitute writer racked up an ever escalating taxi bill. 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 creativity of both plays and got to meet their young author.

It says much for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was impeccably gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he knew the workings of the journalistic world.

Cerebral Gymnast and Emotional Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was hailed as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by personality and narrative. But, just as we belatedly 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 brainy concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was commended for its brilliance in creating a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings 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, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is pushing back the stillness, pushing back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even tragic.”

The characteristic fusion of conceptual boldness and feeling was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that posed a major ethical dilemma: whether public morals was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions obeyed an universal, God-given law. Not your typical subject for a play, but here the topic of a speech being developed by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one understood that it was also about the suffering of a failing marriage and the dangers of a disintegrating society in which space travelers were brawling on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Meticulous Research and Affecting Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he shared with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were receptive to plays about complex ideas. His work was also meticulously studied. I remember, prior to Jumpers, encountering him on the steps of the a library in London where he was clutching a stack of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he answered.

With the years, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly visible. The breakthrough arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than any of his plays to reproduction. It asks a multitude of queries such as whether any civic duty is the outcome of private derangement and whether notions such as justice and patriotism exist outside our perceptions of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a heightened awareness of the ecstasy of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores predestination and volition, classicism and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is profoundly emotional. Thoughts and sentiment flawlessly coincide in a segment where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, bemoans the disappearance of past civilisations to which her instructor responds: “Intellectual breakthroughs caught sight of and lost to view will have their time again.” And that is just what happens, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary rethinking of the classical physics outlasts her unfortunately abbreviated life.

Debating the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a playwright was seldom challenged. What was contested, notably in the early years, were his skepticism about the effectiveness of art: something he frequently talked about in interviews. “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 Vietnam or housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is important but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was totally wrong about that since Wilde’s play presents a running commentary on wealth, wedlock, values, status, the fall of the aristocracy and the dominance of business. But Stoppard contradicted his own point by writing a series of works that engage to powerful results with the abuse of individual freedoms by authoritarian governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Soviet critic wrongly pronounced insane and confined in a chamber with an genuine madman who thinks he is in charge of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the whole orchestra on the stage and to observe Stoppard revealing the harsh illogicalities of communist repression with dark humour. As I commented at the time, “iron is met with wit and inflexibility with a