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Every one of the outstanding playwrights broaden the boundaries of theatre. Beckett and Pinter achieved this in their distinct fashion. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take apparently esoteric themes – ranging from the science of chaos to ethical thought and the enigma of consciousness – and transform them into witty, creative and frequently touching theatrical works. Drama, Sir Laurence Olivier noted, is a powerful glamoriser of thought. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to make ideas dance.

Early Introduction

I was lucky enough to discover Stoppard at an early stage. That was completely thanks to a man named Philip French, who, in addition to being a film critic, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he invited me to present a brief lecture on two broadcast plays by a then little-known writer described as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an destitute writer racked up an skyrocketing cab 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 speaking clock. I was impressed by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their emerging author.

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

Cerebral Virtuoso and Emotional Substance

From the beginning, Stoppard was hailed as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by character and storyline. But, just as we later came to realise that Pinter was consistently a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an depth of emotion to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was commended for its cleverness in constructing a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings indicate that it is about how we are all prey of chance circumstances leading to our end. I remember the actor John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the dialogue is all. The word is beating back the quiet, beating back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even sorrowful.”

The typical combination of daring ideas and feeling was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a big ethical dilemma: whether social morality was a instilled reaction to history or whether moral sanctions followed an unchanging, God-given law. Not your typical dramatic theme, but here the topic of a lecture being developed by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one realised that it was also about the anguish of a broken marriage and the risks of a disintegrating society in which astronauts were brawling on the moon and a ex- minister of agriculture had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Thorough Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s success – one he shared with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also meticulously researched. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, meeting him on the steps of the London Library where he was gripping a stack of books that rose to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With time, the emotional content of his plays became ever more evident. The key moment arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which ages better than most of his plays to revival. It poses a multitude of queries such as whether any civic duty is the outcome of individual madness and whether ideas such as justice and patriotism exist beyond our understanding of them. But underlying this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a intense consciousness of the bliss of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores fatalism and choice, classical ideals and the Romantic movement, and a host of other things, functions because it is intensely emotional. Concepts and sentiment flawlessly coincide in a scene where a brilliant teenager, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past civilizations to which her teacher answers: “Intellectual breakthroughs caught sight of and forgotten will have their renaissance.” And that is precisely what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the Newton's world survives her sadly truncated life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a dramatist was rarely doubted. What was contested, especially in the beginning, were his skepticism about the efficacy of art: something he regularly explored in conversations. “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 Vietnam or housing. Now I have no compunction about that. To avert indirectly to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is important but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a running commentary on finance, marriage, morals, social class, the fall of the upper class and the dominance of trade. But Stoppard undermined his own position by writing a collection of works that engage to great effect with the misuse of human rights by authoritarian regimes. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Eastern Bloc activist falsely declared crazy and locked in a room with an real madman who believes himself in command of an musical ensemble. It was shocking both to see the entire LSO on the stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh absurdities of Russian tyranny with grim wit. As I noted at the time, “brutality is met with irony and inflexibility with a