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All the great dramatists push the limits of theatre. Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their distinct fashion. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly esoteric themes – ranging from chaos theory to philosophical ethics and the mystery of consciousness – and turn them into witty, inventive and frequently emotional plays. Theatre, the actor Olivier once said, is a powerful embellisher of intellect. Stoppard affirmed that with his talent to make ideas dance.

Early Encounter

Fortunately for me to encounter Stoppard in his early career. That was entirely thanks to Philip French, who, aside from being a film critic, was also a the BBC producer. In 1966 he invited me to present a brief lecture on two audio dramas by a then obscure writer described as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an destitute writer racked up an skyrocketing taxi-fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to contact his wife who was the voice of the time. I was captivated by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their emerging author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a dismissive opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he stayed exceptionally courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an ex-journalist himself, he knew the workings of the journalistic world.

Cerebral Gymnast and Emotional Depth

From the beginning, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by concepts as much as by individuals and narrative. But, just as we eventually came to understand that Pinter was always a political dramatist, so we eventually came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s brainy concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was commended for its cleverness in creating a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again suggest that it is about how we are all victims of arbitrary circumstances resulting in our demise. I remember John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is resisting the quiet, resisting the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so touching and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive fusion of conceptual boldness and feeling was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that asked a significant ethical dilemma: whether societal ethics was a instilled reaction to history or whether ethical rules obeyed an unchanging, God-given law. Not your average theatrical topic, but here the focus of a speech being prepared by the play’s main character, 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 unraveling society in which astronauts were brawling on the moon and a previous minister of agriculture had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he had in common with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also carefully researched. I remember, just before Jumpers, encountering him on the steps of the London Library where he was holding 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 feeling of his plays became increasingly visible. The turning point arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which ages better than any of his plays to reproduction. It raises a whole host of queries such as whether any public commitment is the consequence of private derangement and whether notions such as justice and national pride exist outside our understanding of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a acute realization of the bliss of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with predestination and free will, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is intensely touching. Ideas and feeling perfectly coincide in a moment where a brilliant teenager, Thomasina, mourns the loss of past civilizations to which her instructor replies: “Scientific insights seen briefly and lost to view will have their moment.” And that is precisely what happens, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary reinterpretation of the Newtonian universe endures beyond her unfortunately cut short life.

Questioning the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s brilliance as a playwright was infrequently questioned. What was debated, notably in the initial period, were his doubts about the effectiveness of art: something he frequently explored in conversations. “I used to feel alone,” 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 avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was completely wrong about that since Wilde’s play presents a ongoing observation on money, wedlock, values, social class, the weakening of the nobility and the ascendancy of trade. But Stoppard contradicted his own position by writing a series of works that deal to significant impact with the abuse of individual freedoms by authoritarian governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first presented at the Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Russian dissident incorrectly declared insane and imprisoned in a room with an authentic psychiatric patient who believes himself in charge of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the entire LSO on stage and to witness Stoppard exposing the brutal absurdities of Soviet oppression with grim wit. As I wrote at the time, “brutality is met with wit and rigidity with a