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Every one of the finest dramatists broaden the frontiers of theatre. Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their unique fashion. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly specialized subjects – from the science of chaos to moral philosophy and the mystery of the mind – and turn them into humorous, inventive and often moving theatrical works. Drama, Laurence Olivier once said, is a significant embellisher of ideas. Stoppard confirmed that with his capacity to bring concepts to life.

Early Introduction

I had the good fortune to discover Stoppard in his early career. That was entirely due to Philip French, who, aside from being a film critic, was also a the BBC programme maker. In 1966 he asked me to present a brief lecture on two radio plays by a then unknown writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an broke writer ran up an ever escalating cab fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to contact his wife who was the speaking clock. I was captivated by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their emerging author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he was exceptionally courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an one-time reporter himself, he knew the ways of the media.

Cerebral Virtuoso and Heartfelt Depth

From the outset, Stoppard was hailed as an cerebral acrobat: 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 dramatist, so we eventually came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was acclaimed for its brilliance in crafting a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings suggest that it is about how we are all prey of random circumstances resulting in our demise. 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, resisting the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive fusion of conceptual boldness and feeling was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that posed a significant philosophical question: whether societal ethics was a learned behavior to history or whether ethical rules adhered to an absolute, heaven-sent law. Not your average theatrical topic, but here the focus of a lecture being prepared by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one saw the play, the more one understood that it was also about the suffering of a broken marriage and the risks of a collapsing society in which astronauts were scrapping on the moon and a previous agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Research and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were receptive to plays about complex ideas. His work was also thoroughly investigated. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, encountering him on the stairs of the London Library where he was clutching a pile of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With the years, the emotional content of his plays became more and more apparent. The breakthrough perhaps came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than most of his plays to restaging. It asks a whole host of questions such as whether any social obligation is the consequence of individual madness and whether ideas such as justice and patriotism exist outside our views of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense awareness of the bliss of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses fatalism and choice, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is intensely moving. Ideas and feeling seamlessly merge in a segment where a brilliant youth, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past civilisations to which her instructor responds: “Mathematical discoveries seen briefly and overlooked will have their renaissance.” And that is exactly what occurs, in that Thomasina’s innovative reinterpretation of the classical physics survives her unfortunately cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a playwright was seldom questioned. What was discussed, particularly in the early years, were his doubts about the power of art: something he regularly discussed in discussions. “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 social housing. Now I have no qualms about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is important but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde provides a ongoing observation on wealth, matrimony, ethics, status, the decline of the aristocracy and the ascendancy of commerce. But Stoppard contradicted his own position by writing a series of works that deal to great effect with the violation of individual freedoms by authoritarian systems. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Russian dissident incorrectly declared mad and locked in a cell with an authentic lunatic who imagines himself in control of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the whole LSO on stage and to witness Stoppard unmasking the cruel ridiculousness of communist repression with grim wit. As I noted at the time, “force is met with irony and inflexibility with a