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Every one of the finest playwrights broaden the frontiers of drama. Playwrights like Beckett and Pinter achieved this in their distinct manner. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly specialized topics – from chaotic systems to moral philosophy and the mystery of the mind – and convert them into humorous, creative and often moving theatrical works. Drama, the actor Olivier noted, is a significant glamoriser of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his talent to animate intellectual concepts.

Initial Introduction

I had the good fortune to come across Stoppard early on. That was entirely due to Philip French, who, aside from being a cinema critic, was also a British Broadcasting Corporation producer. In 1966 he asked me to deliver a short talk on two audio dramas by a at that time unknown writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an destitute writer accumulated an constantly rising cab 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 struck by the cleverness of both plays and got to meet their youthful author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was perfectly gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he knew the ways of the media.

Cerebral Virtuoso and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was hailed as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by concepts as much as by character and storyline. But, just as we eventually came to understand that Pinter was consistently 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 commended for its brilliance in crafting a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again indicate that it is about how we are all casualties of random circumstances leading to our end. I remember John Wood, who had played 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 quiet, beating back the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even heartbreaking.”

The typical blend of intellectual audacity and emotional substance was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that raised a major moral issue: whether public morals was a instilled reaction to history or whether ethical rules adhered to an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your typical theatrical topic, but here the subject of a talk being developed by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one realised that it was also about the pain of a failing marriage and the risks of a unraveling society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Research and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s success – one he had in common with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also meticulously investigated. I remember, just before Jumpers, meeting him on the stairs of the London Library where he was gripping a pile of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With the passage of time, the emotional content of his plays became more and more evident. The turning point arguably came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than most of his plays to reproduction. It asks a multitude of questions such as whether any social obligation is the outcome of individual madness and whether ideas such as fairness and patriotism exist beyond our perceptions of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense awareness of the joy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses determinism and free will, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a myriad of other things, works because it is profoundly emotional. Thoughts and sentiment perfectly come together in a moment where a exceptional teenager, Thomasina, laments the loss of past civilisations to which her teacher responds: “Scientific insights caught sight of and forgotten will have their time again.” And that is precisely what transpires, in that Thomasina’s innovative revision of the Newton's world endures beyond her unfortunately abbreviated life.

Questioning the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a dramatist was seldom questioned. What was contested, especially in the initial period, were his doubts about the power of art: something he frequently explored in conversations. “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 hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it avoids serious topics.”

I feel he was totally wrong about that since Wilde’s play offers a continuous critique on finance, wedlock, morals, status, the fall of the upper class and the dominance of trade. But Stoppard undermined his own position by writing a series of works that engage to significant impact with the misuse of civil liberties by oppressive governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Eastern Bloc activist wrongly diagnosed mad and imprisoned in a chamber with an real madman who imagines himself in charge of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the entire orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the cruel ridiculousness of Soviet oppression with dark humour. As I commented at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and inflexibility with a