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Every one of the great playwrights extend the limits of theatre. Beckett and Pinter achieved this in their distinct manner. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly specialized topics – from chaotic systems to philosophical ethics and the mystery of the mind – and convert them into clever, imaginative and regularly emotional theatrical works. Drama, the actor Olivier remarked, is a powerful embellisher of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his talent to make ideas dance.

Early Encounter

Fortunately for me to come across Stoppard early on. That was wholly due to Philip French, who, aside from being a cinema critic, was also a British Broadcasting Corporation programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to give a mini-speech on two audio dramas by a at that time unknown writer described as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an destitute writer accumulated an constantly rising cab fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to reach his wife who was the speaking clock. I was captivated by the cleverness of both plays and got to meet their emerging author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a sniffy opening night review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he remained exceptionally gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he grasped the nature of the journalistic world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Heartfelt Depth

From the beginning, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was motivated by concepts as much as by personality and storyline. But, just as we later came to understand that Pinter was consistently a political dramatist, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was praised for its brilliance in creating a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again suggest that it is about how we are all prey of random circumstances causing our end. I remember the actor John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is pushing back the stillness, pushing back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even sorrowful.”

The characteristic blend of daring ideas and heartfelt depth was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big moral issue: whether public morals was a conditioned response to history or whether ethical rules obeyed an universal, God-given law. Not your usual dramatic theme, but here the topic of a talk being written by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one watched the play, the more one understood that it was also about the suffering of a fractured marriage and the risks of a disintegrating society in which astronauts were fighting on the moon and a previous agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Research and Affecting Breakthrough

Stoppard’s success – one he had in common with Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were open to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also thoroughly researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, encountering him on the stairs of the London Library where he was clutching a pile of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he replied.

With the passage of time, the emotional content of his plays became increasingly evident. The turning point perhaps came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than any of his plays to restaging. It asks a multitude of issues such as whether any public commitment is the consequence of private derangement and whether ideas such as justice and national pride exist beyond our perceptions of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense realization of the ecstasy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with determinism and volition, classicism and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, succeeds because it is intensely touching. Concepts and feeling seamlessly come together in a moment where a exceptional youth, Thomasina, mourns the loss of past civilizations to which her instructor answers: “Scientific insights caught sight of and forgotten will have their moment.” And that is precisely what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking revision of the classical physics survives her sadly abbreviated life.

Questioning the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s genius as a playwright was rarely questioned. What was debated, particularly in the beginning, were his reservations about the efficacy of drama: something he frequently explored in conversations. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or social housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is important but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since Wilde’s play offers a continuous critique on money, marriage, ethics, social class, the decline of the nobility and the dominance of business. But Stoppard undermined his own argument by writing a number of works that deal to significant impact with the abuse of individual freedoms by oppressive systems. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy, first staged at the Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Russian dissident incorrectly pronounced mad and confined in a room with an genuine madman who thinks he is in control of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the full orchestra on the stage and to observe Stoppard exposing the brutal absurdities of Russian tyranny with grim wit. As I noted at the time, “force is met with irony and rigidity with a