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Every one of the finest playwrights push the limits of drama. Playwrights like Beckett and Pinter achieved this in their distinct fashion. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly esoteric subjects – from the science of chaos to moral philosophy and the enigma of consciousness – and transform them into humorous, creative and regularly moving plays. The stage, Sir Laurence Olivier noted, is a great embellisher of thought. Stoppard affirmed that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Initial Encounter

Fortunately for me to come across Stoppard early on. That was completely thanks to a man named Philip French, who, aside from being a film critic, was also a the BBC programme maker. In 1966 he asked me to present a short talk on two audio dramas by a back then obscure writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an impoverished writer accumulated 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 impressed by the creativity of both plays and got to meet their young author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s graciousness that even after I had appeared on TV in 1968 and given a sniffy opening night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he stayed impeccably polite. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he knew the workings of the journalistic world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Heartfelt Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was celebrated as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was driven by concepts as much as by character and storyline. But, just as we later came to recognise that Pinter was invariably a political dramatist, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was acclaimed for its brilliance in crafting a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings indicate that it is about how we are all prey of random circumstances leading to our extinction. I remember the actor John Wood, who had portrayed Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, telling 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 moving and even heartbreaking.”

The typical blend of daring ideas and feeling was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big moral issue: whether societal ethics was a conditioned response to history or whether moral sanctions obeyed an universal, God-given law. Not your usual theatrical topic, but here the topic of a speech being prepared by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one experienced 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 Canterbury archbishop.

Meticulous Preparation and Affecting Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also thoroughly researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, meeting him on the steps of the London Library where he was gripping a mound of books that reached up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With time, the sentiment of his plays became ever more apparent. The turning point likely came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than the majority of his plays to reproduction. It poses a multitude of issues such as whether any social obligation is the result of personal instability and whether notions such as fairness and patriotism exist beyond our views of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a acute awareness of the ecstasy of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores predestination and choice, classicism and Romanticism, and a host of other things, succeeds because it is deeply moving. Thoughts and sentiment perfectly merge in a moment where a gifted young girl, Thomasina, mourns the disappearance of past civilisations to which her teacher responds: “Mathematical discoveries seen briefly and overlooked will have their time again.” And that is just what happens, in that Thomasina’s innovative revision of the Newton's world outlasts her unfortunately cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Theatre

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was rarely challenged. What was discussed, notably in the early years, were his reservations about the efficacy of theatre: something he often discussed in discussions. “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 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 addresses no major issues.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since Oscar Wilde's work provides a ongoing observation on finance, matrimony, ethics, social class, the weakening of the upper class and the rise of business. But Stoppard weakened his own point by writing a number of works that grapple to powerful results with the misuse of civil liberties by authoritarian governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first staged at the Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Eastern Bloc activist incorrectly declared insane and imprisoned in a cell with an real psychiatric patient who imagines himself in control of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the full London Symphony Orchestra on stage and to witness Stoppard revealing the harsh ridiculousness of Russian tyranny with dark humour. As I commented at the time, “force is met with wit and rigidity with a