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Every one of the outstanding playwrights push the boundaries of theatre. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter succeeded in their unique manner. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly specialized themes – from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the mystery of consciousness – and convert them into witty, imaginative and regularly touching dramas. Theatre, the actor Olivier noted, is a powerful glamorizer of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his capacity to make ideas dance.

Initial Encounter

I was lucky enough to discover Stoppard at an early stage. That was completely because of a man named Philip French, who, aside from being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he asked me to present a short talk on two radio plays by a then obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an broke writer accumulated an constantly rising cab fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to get in touch with his wife who was the voice of the time. I was struck by the cleverness of both plays and got to meet their youthful author.

It says much for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a critical opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was perfectly courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he understood the ways of the journalistic world.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Emotional Substance

From the start, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by personality and plot. But, just as we belatedly came to recognise that Pinter was consistently a political dramatist, so we eventually 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 constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again suggest that it is about how we are all prey of arbitrary circumstances causing our end. I remember John Wood, who had portrayed Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, remarking, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is pushing back the stillness, resisting the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even sorrowful.”

The typical blend of intellectual audacity and emotional substance was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, in the end, was a play that posed a major philosophical question: whether public morals was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions obeyed an universal, heaven-sent law. Not your average dramatic theme, but here the subject of a lecture being developed by the play’s hero, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the anguish of a broken marriage and the risks of a unraveling society in which space travelers were scrapping on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s success – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also carefully researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, running into him on the steps of the London Library where he was clutching a stack of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With the years, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly visible. The turning point likely came with The Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than most of his plays to reproduction. It asks a whole host of questions such as whether any social obligation is the consequence of individual madness and whether notions such as justice and patriotism exist independent of our understanding of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a acute awareness of the ecstasy of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores determinism and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, succeeds because it is intensely touching. Ideas and feeling flawlessly merge in a segment where a brilliant teenager, Thomasina, bemoans the demise of past cultures to which her teacher replies: “Intellectual breakthroughs glimpsed and forgotten will have their renaissance.” And that is exactly what happens, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the classical physics endures beyond her unfortunately cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was rarely questioned. What was contested, particularly in the beginning, were his doubts about the power of art: something he often discussed in discussions. “I used to feel isolated,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or housing. Now I have no compunction about that. To avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is important but it addresses no major issues.”

I believe he was completely wrong about that since the play by Wilde offers a continuous critique on money, wedlock, values, status, the weakening of the aristocracy and the rise of trade. But Stoppard contradicted his own point by writing a series of works that deal to great effect with the misuse of human rights by authoritarian regimes. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy, first presented at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Soviet critic incorrectly diagnosed mad and imprisoned in a room with an genuine psychiatric patient who imagines himself in control of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the entire London Symphony Orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard exposing the brutal ridiculousness of communist repression with dark humour. As I noted at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and inflexibility with a