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Every one of the outstanding dramatists extend the limits of theatre. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter achieved this in their distinct manner. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly obscure themes – from chaotic systems to moral philosophy and the enigma of consciousness – and transform them into humorous, imaginative and often touching theatrical works. Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier remarked, is a great glamoriser of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Early Discovery

Fortunately for me to encounter Stoppard in his early career. That was wholly thanks to Philip French, who, besides being a cinema critic, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to give a brief lecture on two audio dramas by a at that time little-known writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an broke writer accumulated an skyrocketing taxi bill. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to contact his wife who was the voice of the time. I was struck by the ingenuity 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 dismissive opening night review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he stayed exceptionally courteous. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he knew 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 thoughts as much as by personality and narrative. But, just as we later came to realise that Pinter was consistently a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an depth of emotion to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was commended for its cleverness in crafting a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again reveal that it is about how we are all victims of random circumstances causing our demise. 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 beating back the silence, pushing back the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even heartbreaking.”

The characteristic fusion of conceptual boldness and feeling was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that posed a big ethical dilemma: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions followed an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your usual theatrical topic, but here the focus of a talk being developed 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 perils of a disintegrating society in which astronauts were fighting on the moon and a ex- minister of agriculture had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Research and Affecting Revelation

Stoppard’s success – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were amenable to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also carefully researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, meeting him on the entrance of the a library in London where he was clutching a pile of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With the years, the sentiment of his plays became more and more apparent. The breakthrough perhaps came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than any of his plays to reproduction. It raises a whole host of questions such as whether any social obligation is the result of private derangement and whether ideas such as justice and patriotism exist beyond our understanding of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a heightened awareness of the bliss of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores fatalism and volition, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, functions because it is intensely emotional. Concepts and sentiment perfectly merge in a segment where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, bemoans the loss of past civilizations to which her tutor replies: “Mathematical discoveries caught sight of and overlooked will have their moment.” And that is just what occurs, in that Thomasina’s innovative revision of the Newtonian universe outlasts her unfortunately cut short life.

Questioning the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was infrequently questioned. What was discussed, especially in the beginning, were his doubts about the effectiveness of art: something he frequently explored in interviews. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a jerk if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was totally wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a running commentary on wealth, wedlock, ethics, status, the decline of the upper class and the ascendancy of commerce. But Stoppard weakened his own argument by writing a collection of works that engage to great effect with the misuse of civil liberties by oppressive systems. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Soviet critic falsely declared insane and imprisoned in a cell with an real madman who believes himself in charge of an orchestra. It was startling both to see the entire orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh absurdities of Russian tyranny with dark humour. As I commented at the time, “brutality is met with sarcasm and rigidity with a