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Every one of the finest playwrights push the limits of drama. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter succeeded in their unique way. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly esoteric subjects – ranging from chaotic systems to moral philosophy and the mystery of the mind – and convert them into witty, imaginative and often emotional dramas. The stage, the actor Olivier once said, is a great glamorizer of ideas. Stoppard demonstrated that with his capacity to bring concepts to life.

Initial Encounter

Fortunately for me to encounter Stoppard early on. That was entirely thanks to a man named Philip French, who, aside from being a cinema critic, was also a British Broadcasting Corporation programme maker. In 1966 he requested that I to give a mini-speech on two broadcast plays by a back then unknown writer referred to as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an impoverished writer racked up an constantly rising taxi-fare. And in Glad I'll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to get in touch with his wife who was the speaking clock. I was struck by the cleverness of both plays and had the chance to meet their emerging author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had been on television in 1968 and given a sniffy first-night review of Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he remained perfectly courteous. But one thing people overlook about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he grasped the ways of our world.

Intellectual Gymnast and Heartfelt Depth

From the start, Stoppard was celebrated as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was propelled by thoughts as much as by character and storyline. But, just as we belatedly came to realise that Pinter was consistently a political playwright, so we eventually came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s cerebral concepts. The Death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was commended for its cleverness in crafting a drama out of two minor characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings reveal that it is about how we are all victims of random circumstances leading to our demise. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an quintessential Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the dialogue is all. The word is pushing back the quiet, beating back the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive combination of conceptual boldness and heartfelt depth was also evident in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, in the end, was a play that raised a significant moral issue: whether societal ethics was a learned behavior to history or whether ethical rules adhered to an absolute, heaven-sent law. Not your usual subject for a play, but here the focus of a lecture being developed by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one watched the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the anguish of a failing marriage and the perils of a unraveling society in which astronauts were scrapping on the moon and a ex- agriculture minister had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Thorough Preparation and Affecting Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he had in common with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were open to plays about complex ideas. His work was also thoroughly researched. I remember, prior to Jumpers, running into him on the entrance of the a library in London where he was clutching a stack of books that came up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With time, the emotional content of his plays became ever more visible. The turning point arguably came with The Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than the majority of his plays to restaging. It asks a plethora of questions such as whether any civic duty is the outcome of individual madness and whether notions such as justice and patriotism exist beyond our views of them. But underlying 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 deals with determinism and free will, classical ideals and Romanticism, and a multitude of other things, succeeds because it is profoundly touching. Ideas and feeling flawlessly coincide in a moment where a gifted youth, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past civilisations to which her teacher responds: “Intellectual breakthroughs caught sight of and forgotten will have their moment.” And that is precisely what transpires, in that Thomasina’s revolutionary reinterpretation of the Newton's world outlasts her tragically truncated life.

Debating the Power of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a dramatist was infrequently challenged. What was debated, notably in the beginning, were his doubts about the effectiveness of art: something he regularly discussed 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 Vietnam or housing. Now I have no hesitation about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is important but it avoids serious topics.”

I think he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a running commentary on money, wedlock, values, status, the fall of the upper class and the dominance of commerce. But Stoppard weakened his own argument by writing a collection of works that deal to powerful results with the misuse of human rights by dictatorial governments. One of the most stunning was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It portrayed a Russian dissident falsely pronounced crazy and locked in a chamber with an genuine madman who imagines himself in command of an musical ensemble. It was startling both to see the full LSO on the stage and to witness Stoppard unmasking the cruel absurdities of communist repression with grim wit. As I wrote at the time, “iron is met with sarcasm and inflexibility with a