Britain’s Greatest Living Playwright

To call anyone “Britain’s greatest living playwright” is a bold claim. Competition for the title is fierce, and ever-growing – a simple glance at the work coming out of the likes of the Royal Court shows the strength of new talent.

But one name has been at the forefront of British drama since his debut play, first staged at the 1966 Fringe and promptly picked up and produced at the Old Vic Theatre (in its National Theatre days) in London.

After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead!, a re-telling of the events of Hamlet from the perspective of the titular courtiers, mere bit-parts in the original, was a storming success, Tom Stoppard’s name was made virtually overnight.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was – is – an intoxicating blend of dry wit, sly re-purposing of existing plotlines, and deep metaphysical conversations.

With such extensive discussions dominating the play’s runtime, it runs the risk of being too scientific (if such a thing exists), of coming off cold and inhuman, but somehow manages to sidestep it all. There’s a heart pulsing beneath the play, and it occasionally rears its head in beautifully eloquent fashion.

Just take Guildenstern’s final speech:

“No…no…not for us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over. Death is not anything… death is not. It’s the absence of presence, nothing more. The endless time of never coming back. A gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound…”

That blend of eloquence and emotion, warmth and wit is a continuing trend throughout Stoppard’s works.

The balance varies from play to play – early play Jumpers (another Old Vic production in 1972) is designed as a farce, and bears the comedy to match, but also wields philosophical discussions over morality (“what’s so good about Good?”).

Travesties, which followed two years later courtesy of the RSC, tells the tale of a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich during the First World War, featuring an eclectic cast of characters that includes James Joyce, Lenin and Dada founder Tristan Tzara. With roots in realities, Travesties ends up being an examination of art and war, albeit one riddled with puns and ingenious nods to the events of Earnest.

Quarks, quasars, big bangs, black holes - who gives a shit?

Stoppard’s trend of producing a play every year or two continued from 1966 through to Hapgood in 1988, the first play that really felt like it failed to strike that balance between science and emotion. Ostensibly a piece of spy fiction, Hapgood deals in quantum mechanics (not least the uncertainty principle), and doesn’t quite succeed in striking the classical Stoppard notes. Critics (and audiences) reacted negatively, and the play never really took off.

A five-year theatrical silence followed. Then along came Arcadia.

Set in an English country house, Arcadia follows events in 1809 and 1993 in parallel, using the interactions between its characters to explore the very concept of the past and how we perceive it, as well as the likes of the second law of thermodynamics, iterated algorithms and the shift in gardening techniques across the centuries.

It’s an impossibly complex maelstrom of competing ideas, plotted to the nth degree, to the point where throwaway lines are key plot points. Yet, somehow, it never works to the detriment of the play.

The sheer chaos of the play’s plot simply serves to demonstrate its larger themes, which the characters themselves are more than happy to vocalise. The conflict between science and the humanities comes to the fore more than once, with one character spurning scientific progress with the gem of a line “quarks, quasars, big bangs, black holes – who gives a shit?” before going on to remark that “I’d push the lot of you [scientists] over a cliff myself. Except the one in a wheelchair, I’d lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.” A serious conversation, veiled in comedic insults. Stoppard was back on form.

Arcadia still stands as what is, most likely, Stoppard’s greatest work, but that’s not for lack of trying in the years since. 1997’s The Invention of Love, based on the life of A. E. Housman (the poet), was equally well acclaimed, while Stoppard’s reputation outside the theatre was cemented for eternity when he won an Academy Award for his screenplay with Marc Norman for Shakespeare in Love.

2002 saw a trilogy of plays, The Coast of Utopia, split into Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, and dealing with events in late 19th century Russia. Running nine hours in total, the three plays opened in quick succession in the National Theatre, winning a Tony Award after their Broadway debut four years later.

At the same time as The Coast of Utopia was earning its Tony, Stoppard’s next play was opening at the Royal Court. Rock ‘n’ Roll was one of Stoppard’s more political plays, dealing with the socialist movement in Czechoslovakia under the Soviet Union, and rock and roll’s part in that movement.

No-one out there manages quite the same trick

The idea of dissidence through art, specifically against the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, was one Stoppard dipped into from time to time, although _Rock ‘n’ Roll _is arguably his largest work to tackle it.

It’s here worth noting that Stoppard is Czech by birth, although his parents fled the country when he was two during the Nazi invasion.

After Rock ‘n’ Roll, the plays stopped.

The non-theatrical work continues to pour out, however, with screenplays for the television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End and the film version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, as well as the radio play Darkside (another entry in a long list of Stoppard’s radio plays).

Then came the announcement of a new Stoppard for 2015 – The Hard Problem – which promised to wander into the realms of consciousness. In interviews, Stoppard revealed that the subject had been a long time coming – “I don’t use a computer, so I take lots of [newspaper] clippings. Some of the oldest ones date back to the 80s.”

He also, being Stoppard, couldn’t avoid some typical wit. When asked why he waited so long to publish the play, he remarked “I didn’t wait, I procrastinated.”

The Hard Problem shares many traits with Stoppard’s earlier works, not least its delightful blending of highly technical discussions with deft humour and emotion, but also marks a slight shift away. The scenes are shorter, and the play runs through with no interval. It’s all got faster, more reminiscent of a film – maybe Stoppard’s screenplay work has finally started to seep into his theatrical ventures.

That’s not a criticism. Far from it. Change is always exciting, and Stoppard pulls off _The Hard Problem _with aplomb. It’s another successful, brilliant work in a list stretching back decades.

Stoppard’s influence is undeniable – a brief glance at plays such as The Nether (currently in the West End) proves that much – but there’s still no-one out there who matches up. No-one out there manages quick the same trick. Maybe no-one ever will.