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Every one of the great dramatists extend the frontiers of theatre. Beckett and Pinter did it in their unique manner. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently specialized topics – ranging from chaotic systems to philosophical ethics and the enigma of the mind – and transform them into clever, imaginative and regularly moving theatrical works. The stage, Laurence Olivier remarked, is a significant glamorizer of ideas. Stoppard confirmed that with his capacity to make ideas dance.

Early Encounter

I had the good fortune to encounter Stoppard at an early stage. That was wholly because of a man named Philip French, who, in addition to being a film critic, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he requested that I to give a mini-speech on two audio dramas by a then little-known writer called Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an impoverished writer ran up an constantly rising cab fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to contact his wife who was the speaking clock. I was impressed by the creativity of both plays and had the chance to meet their young author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a dismissive premiere review of Real Inspector Hound – which I now love – he remained exceptionally gracious. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he understood the workings of our world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Emotional Substance

From the outset, Stoppard was hailed as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was motivated by concepts as much as by personality and plot. But, just as we belatedly came to understand that Pinter was always a political playwright, so we eventually came to see that there was an depth of emotion to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was praised for its ingenuity in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again suggest that it is about how we are all victims of chance circumstances resulting in our end. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, remarking, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is beating back the quiet, pushing back the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even heartbreaking.”

The distinctive blend of daring ideas and emotional substance was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big philosophical question: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether principles followed an unchanging, divinely inspired law. Not your average dramatic theme, but here the focus of a lecture being prepared by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one understood that it was also about the pain of a failing marriage and the dangers of a unraveling society in which astronauts were scrapping on the moon and a previous minister of agriculture had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Preparation and Affecting Breakthrough

Stoppard’s success – one he shared with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that theatregoers were open to plays about complex ideas. His work was also thoroughly investigated. I remember, prior to Jumpers, running into 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 replied.

With the passage of time, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly visible. The key moment likely came with Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than any of his plays to revival. It poses a multitude of issues such as whether any social obligation is the result of individual madness and whether ideas such as fairness and patriotism exist outside our views of them. But behind this – and what makes the play so relevant – is a intense consciousness of the ecstasy of love and the pain of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with fatalism and free will, classicism and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, functions because it is intensely emotional. Concepts and emotion seamlessly come together in a segment where a exceptional young girl, Thomasina, laments the demise of past civilisations to which her tutor replies: “Mathematical discoveries caught sight of and forgotten will have their moment.” And that is precisely what happens, in that Thomasina’s innovative rethinking of the Newton's world survives her unfortunately cut short life.

Questioning the Power of Theatre

Stoppard’s brilliance as a playwright was rarely challenged. What was debated, particularly in the initial period, were his skepticism about the effectiveness of theatre: something he frequently discussed in conversations. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it avoids serious topics.”

I think he was totally wrong about that since Oscar Wilde's work presents a ongoing observation on wealth, matrimony, morals, status, the fall of the upper class and the dominance of trade. But Stoppard weakened his own argument by writing a number of works that engage to significant impact with the violation of human rights by oppressive governments. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Eastern Bloc activist wrongly diagnosed crazy and imprisoned in a chamber with an authentic madman who thinks he is in command of an symphony. It was startling both to see the full London Symphony Orchestra on the stage and to observe Stoppard unmasking the harsh illogicalities of communist repression with dark humour. As I wrote at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and strictness with a