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Every one of the great dramatists push the boundaries of drama. Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their unique way. The feat of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly obscure subjects – ranging from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the mystery of the mind – and transform them into humorous, inventive and frequently touching theatrical works. Theatre, the actor Olivier remarked, is a great embellisher of intellect. Stoppard affirmed that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Early Introduction

Fortunately for me to come across Stoppard early on. That was entirely due to a man named Philip French, who, in addition to being a movie reviewer, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he invited me to present a short talk on two broadcast plays by a then obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an destitute writer ran up an ever escalating taxi-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 ingenuity of both plays and got to meet their youthful author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a dismissive first-night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was exceptionally polite. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he knew the nature of the journalistic world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was celebrated as an mental athlete: a man who was propelled by concepts as much as by personality and narrative. But, just as we later came to understand that Pinter was consistently a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was commended for its brilliance in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but multiple watchings reveal that it is about how we are all victims of chance circumstances resulting in our extinction. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an quintessential Stoppard actor, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the dialogue is all. The word is beating back the stillness, pushing back the darkness … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even tragic.”

The distinctive blend of daring ideas and emotional substance was also apparent in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that posed a big moral issue: whether societal ethics was a conditioned response to history or whether principles followed an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your typical theatrical topic, but here the focus of a talk being prepared by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one realised that it was also about the anguish of a failing marriage and the perils of a unraveling society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Preparation and Affecting Revelation

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were amenable to plays about complex ideas. His work was also meticulously studied. I remember, prior to Jumpers, encountering him on the stairs of the London Library where he was clutching a stack of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With the years, the emotional content of his plays became increasingly apparent. The breakthrough likely came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than the majority of his plays to restaging. It asks a multitude of queries such as whether any social obligation is the result of private derangement and whether notions such as justice and patriotism exist outside our perceptions of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a heightened realization of the joy of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with predestination and free will, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a myriad of other things, works because it is intensely touching. Concepts and sentiment perfectly merge in a segment where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, bemoans the loss of past civilisations to which her teacher responds: “Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and overlooked will have their moment.” And that is just what happens, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking revision of the classical physics outlasts her sadly cut short life.

Debating the Power of Art

Stoppard’s genius as a dramatist was infrequently challenged. What was discussed, particularly in the initial period, were his reservations about the effectiveness of art: something he frequently talked about 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 Vietnam or housing. Now I have no compunction about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it addresses no major issues.”

I feel he was entirely wrong about that since Wilde’s play presents a continuous critique on finance, marriage, morals, social class, the fall of the upper class and the dominance of business. But Stoppard weakened his own position by writing a series of works that deal to significant impact with the violation of individual freedoms by authoritarian regimes. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Russian dissident wrongly pronounced mad and confined in a room with an genuine psychiatric patient who believes himself in control of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the whole LSO on the stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh illogicalities of Soviet oppression with grim wit. As I commented at the time, “force is met with irony and inflexibility with a