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All the outstanding dramatists broaden the frontiers of theatre. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter succeeded in their unique fashion. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly esoteric subjects – from the science of chaos to philosophical ethics and the enigma of the mind – and convert them into witty, inventive and frequently emotional plays. Theatre, Laurence Olivier once said, is a great glamoriser of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to make ideas dance.

Early Introduction

I was lucky enough to come across Stoppard in his early career. That was wholly thanks to 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 short talk on two audio dramas by a at that time obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an impoverished writer ran up an skyrocketing taxi-fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus operator tried to get in touch with his wife who was the voice of the time. I was captivated by the creativity of both plays and got to meet their young author.

It says much for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of Real Inspector Hound – which I now love – he was perfectly polite. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he understood the nature of the media.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Emotional Depth

From the start, Stoppard was praised as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was motivated by thoughts as much as by personality and storyline. But, just as we belatedly came to recognise that Pinter was invariably a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s brainy concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was praised for its brilliance in constructing a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again suggest that it is about how we are all victims of chance circumstances leading to our extinction. 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 resisting the stillness, resisting the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so touching and even sorrowful.”

The characteristic blend of conceptual boldness and feeling was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that posed a major ethical dilemma: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions adhered to an universal, divinely inspired law. Not your usual dramatic theme, but here the subject of a talk being written by the play’s hero, 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 perils of a unraveling society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a previous agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Preparation and Emotional Breakthrough

Stoppard’s achievement – one he had in common with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were open to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also thoroughly investigated. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, running into him on the entrance of the a library in London where he was clutching 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 more and more evident. The turning point arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which holds up better than any of his plays to restaging. It asks a multitude of queries such as whether any social obligation is the outcome of private derangement and whether notions such as justice and patriotism exist outside our perceptions of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a acute consciousness of the bliss of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which addresses fatalism and volition, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a multitude of other things, succeeds because it is deeply touching. Concepts and sentiment flawlessly merge in a segment where a gifted youth, Thomasina, laments the loss of past cultures to which her instructor replies: “Mathematical discoveries seen briefly and overlooked will have their moment.” And that is just what occurs, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary rethinking of the Newtonian universe outlasts her tragically cut short life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a playwright was infrequently challenged. What was discussed, notably in the beginning, were his doubts about the power of art: something he regularly talked about in discussions. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a jerk if you weren’t writing about the Vietnam War 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 provides a ongoing observation on wealth, wedlock, morals, social class, the weakening of the aristocracy and the rise of trade. But Stoppard contradicted his own argument by writing a number of works that grapple to great effect with the abuse of human rights by authoritarian governments. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy, first staged at the Festival Hall in 1977. It showed a Eastern Bloc activist wrongly diagnosed insane and confined in a room with an authentic madman who believes himself in command of an orchestra. It was shocking both to see the entire LSO on the stage and to observe 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