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Every one of the outstanding dramatists push the frontiers of theatre. Beckett and Pinter did it in their unique manner. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently specialized subjects – from the science of chaos to moral philosophy and the mystery of consciousness – and turn them into humorous, inventive and regularly touching dramas. Theatre, the actor Olivier remarked, is a significant embellisher of ideas. Stoppard affirmed that with his talent to make ideas dance.

Initial Introduction

I was lucky enough to come across Stoppard in his early career. That was completely thanks to Philip French, who, in addition to being a film critic, was also a the BBC programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to present a brief lecture on two audio dramas by a then obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an broke writer racked up an ever escalating taxi-fare. And in If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to get in touch with his wife who was the time announcement service. I was impressed by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their young author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a dismissive premiere review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he stayed impeccably gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he knew the nature of the media.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was motivated by ideas as much as by character and plot. But, just as we eventually came to realise that Pinter was invariably a political dramatist, so we eventually came to see that there was an depth of emotion to Stoppard’s brainy concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was praised for its ingenuity in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings suggest that it is about how we are all victims of arbitrary circumstances causing our end. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is resisting the stillness, beating back the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive fusion of intellectual audacity and heartfelt depth was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big ethical dilemma: whether societal ethics was a learned behavior to history or whether ethical rules obeyed an absolute, God-given law. Not your average subject for a play, but here the focus of a talk being prepared by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one watched the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the suffering of a broken marriage and the risks of a unraveling society in which space travelers were brawling on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Research and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he had in common with Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were amenable to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also meticulously studied. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, encountering him on the steps of the London Library where he was holding a mound of books that reached up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he replied.

With time, the emotional content of his plays became increasingly evident. The key moment likely came with The 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 outcome of private derangement and whether notions such as justice and national pride exist beyond our views of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a acute awareness of the joy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with predestination and volition, classicism and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is deeply touching. Concepts and sentiment seamlessly coincide in a scene where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, bemoans the loss of past civilisations to which her tutor replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs seen briefly and lost to view will have their time again.” And that is exactly what occurs, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the classical physics survives her sadly abbreviated life.

Questioning the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s genius as a playwright was seldom challenged. What was discussed, especially in the beginning, were his reservations about the power of art: something he frequently talked about in discussions. “I used to feel isolated,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a shit if you weren’t writing about the Vietnam War or housing. Now I have no compunction about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was totally wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a ongoing observation on wealth, marriage, values, class, the weakening of the nobility and the rise of commerce. But Stoppard undermined his own position by writing a collection of works that deal to powerful results with the violation of individual freedoms by authoritarian governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first staged at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Soviet critic falsely pronounced mad and imprisoned in a chamber with an authentic madman who imagines himself in control of an symphony. It was startling both to see the whole LSO on the stage and to witness Stoppard unmasking the cruel ridiculousness of Russian tyranny with dark humour. As I commented at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and strictness with a