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Every one of the finest dramatists broaden the boundaries of drama. Beckett and Pinter did it in their distinct manner. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly esoteric subjects – from chaotic systems to philosophical ethics and the mystery of the mind – and turn them into clever, imaginative and regularly touching plays. The stage, the actor Olivier remarked, is a great glamorizer of intellect. Stoppard demonstrated that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Initial Encounter

Fortunately for me to discover Stoppard early on. That was completely because of Philip French, who, besides being a movie reviewer, was also a the BBC producer. In 1966 he requested that I to present a short talk on two audio dramas by a at that time obscure writer called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an destitute writer racked up an constantly rising taxi bill. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to get in touch with his wife who was the time announcement service. I was struck by the cleverness of both plays and got to meet their emerging author.

It speaks volumes for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical first-night review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he was impeccably courteous. But one thing people neglect about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he understood the workings of the journalistic world.

Intellectual Virtuoso and Emotional Depth

From the start, Stoppard was celebrated as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was driven by thoughts as much as by individuals and storyline. But, just as we later came to realise that Pinter was invariably a political playwright, so we eventually came to see that there was an undercurrent of feeling to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was acclaimed for its cleverness in creating a drama out of two secondary characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings reveal that it is about how we are all prey of random circumstances resulting in our demise. I remember John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the language is all. The word is resisting the stillness, resisting the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so touching and even sorrowful.”

The typical blend of daring ideas and heartfelt depth was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 hit, Jumpers. This, after all, was a play that raised a significant moral issue: whether societal ethics was a conditioned response to history or whether ethical rules adhered to an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your typical subject for a play, but here the topic of a talk being written by the play’s protagonist, George Moore. But the more one watched the play, the more one realised that it was also about the suffering of a failing marriage and the perils of a collapsing society in which space travelers were fighting on the moon and a previous agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Preparation and Affecting Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about sophisticated ideas. His work was also carefully researched. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, encountering 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 responded.

With the passage of time, the sentiment of his plays became increasingly visible. The key moment perhaps came with The Real Thing (1982) which ages better than most of his plays to reproduction. It asks a multitude of questions such as whether any civic duty is the result of private derangement and whether notions such as fairness and national pride exist outside our understanding of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense realization of the joy of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with predestination and free will, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a host of other things, succeeds because it is profoundly emotional. Concepts and emotion perfectly coincide in a moment where a brilliant teenager, Thomasina, laments the loss of past civilisations to which her teacher answers: “Scientific insights seen briefly and lost to view will have their moment.” And that is exactly what transpires, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking rethinking of the classical physics outlasts her tragically truncated life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was rarely questioned. What was discussed, especially in the initial period, were his doubts about the efficacy of art: something he frequently discussed in interviews. “I used to feel isolated,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a jerk if you weren’t writing about the Vietnam War or social housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it addresses no major issues.”

I think he was entirely wrong about that since Oscar Wilde's work offers a continuous critique on money, matrimony, values, class, the weakening of the aristocracy and the ascendancy of commerce. But Stoppard weakened his own position by writing a number of works that engage to powerful results with the misuse of civil liberties by authoritarian governments. One of the most remarkable was Every Good Boy, first presented at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Soviet critic incorrectly pronounced insane and locked in a cell with an authentic psychiatric patient who thinks he is in control of an symphony. It was astonishing both to see the whole London Symphony Orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh ridiculousness of Soviet oppression with grim wit. As I wrote at the time, “iron is met with irony and rigidity with a