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Every one of the finest dramatists broaden the limits of drama. Beckett and Pinter succeeded in their unique way. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take ostensibly obscure topics – from the science of chaos to philosophical ethics and the mystery of consciousness – and turn them into witty, creative and regularly emotional dramas. The stage, Sir Laurence Olivier remarked, is a significant glamoriser of ideas. Stoppard confirmed that with his ability to bring concepts to life.

Initial Encounter

I had the good fortune to encounter Stoppard in his early career. That was completely because of a man named Philip French, who, besides being a cinema critic, was also a BBC programme maker. In 1966 he invited me to deliver a mini-speech on two broadcast plays by a back then unknown writer described as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an broke writer accumulated an constantly rising 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 youthful author.

It is telling for Stoppard’s generosity of spirit that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a dismissive first-night review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I today adore – he stayed perfectly gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he knew the ways of the media.

Cerebral Gymnast and Emotional Depth

From the outset, Stoppard was praised as an cerebral acrobat: a man who was motivated by concepts as much as by character and narrative. But, just as we belatedly came to realise that Pinter was invariably a political playwright, so we eventually 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 ingenuity in crafting a drama out of two secondary characters from Hamlet, but seeing it again indicate that it is about how we are all casualties of chance circumstances leading to our extinction. I remember John Wood, who had acted Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an iconic Stoppard actor, telling me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is pushing back the stillness, resisting the gloom … I think this is what makes his plays so moving and even sorrowful.”

The distinctive combination of daring ideas and feeling was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 popular play, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that asked a big ethical dilemma: whether public morals was a learned behavior to history or whether principles adhered to an universal, heaven-sent law. Not your average theatrical topic, but here the topic of a lecture being prepared by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one understood that it was also about the pain of a broken marriage and the dangers of a disintegrating society in which space travelers were brawling on the moon and a previous minister of agriculture had been made archbishop of Canterbury.

Meticulous Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s achievement – one he shared with Michael Frayn – was to show that viewers were receptive to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also meticulously investigated. I remember, prior to Jumpers, running into him on the entrance of the London Library where he was gripping a mound of books that reached up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he answered.

With the years, the feeling of his plays became increasingly evident. The turning point perhaps came with The Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than any of his plays to reproduction. It poses a plethora of questions such as whether any social obligation is the consequence of personal instability and whether ideas such as fairness and national pride exist beyond our understanding of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so relatable – is a intense consciousness of the ecstasy of love and the agony of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which deals with predestination and free will, classicism and Romanticism, and a host of other things, functions because it is intensely moving. Thoughts and sentiment perfectly coincide in a scene where a gifted teenager, Thomasina, bemoans the disappearance of past civilisations to which her instructor answers: “Scientific insights seen briefly and lost to view will have their time again.” And that is just what transpires, in that Thomasina’s innovative revision of the Newton's world outlasts her sadly abbreviated life.

Debating the Power of Art

Stoppard’s brilliance as a dramatist was infrequently challenged. What was debated, especially in the initial period, were his doubts about the efficacy of drama: something he frequently explored in conversations. “I used to feel alone,” he said in 1976, “because when I started to write, you were a bad person if you weren’t writing about Vietnam or social housing. Now I have no qualms about that. To allude subtly to Travesties [his 1974 play], The Importance of Being Earnest is significant but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde provides a ongoing observation on finance, marriage, values, social class, the fall of the nobility and the rise of trade. But Stoppard contradicted his own point by writing a collection of works that engage to great effect with the violation of civil liberties by dictatorial governments. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first staged at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Soviet critic wrongly diagnosed mad and confined in a cell with an real lunatic who thinks he is in command of an musical ensemble. It was astonishing both to see the full orchestra on stage and to see Stoppard unmasking the harsh illogicalities of communist repression with grim wit. As I commented at the time, “force is met with wit and rigidity with a