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All the finest dramatists broaden the boundaries of drama. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter did it in their distinct manner. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly obscure themes – from the science of chaos to philosophical ethics and the mystery of the mind – and transform them into witty, imaginative and frequently touching plays. Drama, Sir Laurence Olivier noted, is a powerful embellisher of thought. Stoppard confirmed that with his capacity to bring concepts to life.

Initial Introduction

Fortunately for me to discover Stoppard at an early stage. That was entirely due to Philip French, who, besides being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he asked me to deliver a short talk on two radio plays by a at that time obscure writer described as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an impoverished writer racked up an constantly rising taxi-fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to reach his wife who was the time announcement service. I was captivated by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their emerging author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a sniffy opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I now love – he remained exceptionally gracious. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he grasped the ways of the journalistic world.

Cerebral Gymnast and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was motivated by concepts as much as by character and plot. But, just as we later came to realise that Pinter was consistently a political dramatist, so we finally came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was acclaimed for its brilliance in crafting a drama out of two secondary characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again indicate that it is about how we are all casualties of chance circumstances resulting in our end. I remember the actor John Wood, who had portrayed Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an quintessential Stoppard actor, remarking, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is beating back the stillness, pushing back the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even tragic.”

The characteristic combination of intellectual audacity and heartfelt depth was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, in the end, was a play that raised a big philosophical question: whether social morality was a learned behavior to history or whether moral sanctions adhered to an universal, heaven-sent law. Not your usual dramatic theme, but here the focus of a talk being developed by the play’s hero, George Moore. But the more one watched the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the suffering of a fractured marriage and the perils of a collapsing society in which space travelers were scrapping on the moon and a previous agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were receptive to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also meticulously studied. I remember, prior to Jumpers, meeting him on the entrance of the London Library where he was holding a stack of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he replied.

With the passage of time, the sentiment of his plays became more and more evident. The breakthrough arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than the majority of his plays to revival. It raises a plethora of issues such as whether any civic duty is the result of private derangement and whether ideas such as fairness and national pride exist beyond our perceptions of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a heightened realization of the bliss of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses predestination and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, functions because it is profoundly moving. Concepts and emotion seamlessly come together in a scene where a exceptional youth, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past civilizations to which her instructor replies: “Scientific insights glimpsed and overlooked will have their moment.” And that is exactly what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the classical physics outlasts her tragically cut short life.

Questioning the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a playwright was infrequently questioned. What was debated, notably in the early years, were his skepticism about the efficacy of drama: something he regularly talked about in conversations. “I used to feel out on a limb,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a shit 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 meaningful but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was totally wrong about that since Wilde’s play presents a running commentary on wealth, matrimony, ethics, social class, the weakening of the upper class and the ascendancy of business. But Stoppard undermined his own position by writing a number of works that deal to great effect with the abuse of civil liberties by oppressive systems. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Russian dissident incorrectly diagnosed insane and confined in a chamber with an real lunatic who thinks he is in command of an orchestra. It was astonishing both to see the full LSO on the stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh absurdities of Russian tyranny with dark humour. As I wrote at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and inflexibility with a