Tom Stoppard — master of dramatic invention

Press, 3 May 1977, Page 17

Tom Stoppard — master of dramatic invention

HAROLD HOBSON

In one respect at least Tom Stoppard is Britain’s most surprising dramatist. From his background noone would ever expect that he would write the type of play that has made him famous. What above all else his most celebrated pieces, such as “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” “Travesties” and “Jumpers,” have in common is an extreme mastery of the logical and illogical complexities of the English language. They are full of metaphysical puzzles and paradoxes argued out with a linguistic ingenuity unparalleled in the work of any other contemporary playwright. , The twists and turns of Stoppard’s dialectic in his demented professor’s endless debate with'himself in “Jumpers” about whether or not God exists are so dazzling, unexpected and diabolically clever that one’s head spins in the effort to follow. Yet the effort itself is so fascinating, so irrestible, that in the immensely popular repertory of the National Theatre "Jumpers” is by far the most popular offering. Every night that it is Performed the Lyttelton Theatre — one of the three playhouses that form.the complex of the National — is crowded "Tth enthusiastic audiences delighting in the sheer aesthetic pleasure of Stoppard’s mastery of the language.

.Now the astonishing thing in view of all this is that English was not what Stoppard first heard as a child; and it is not the

language that one would expect him to have acquired in his earliest infancy. Stoppard was born of Czech parents in Czechoslovakia in July, 1937.

Even when he left Czechoslovakia it was not directly to England that he went. His parents took him to Singapore, and from there to India.

His father died, and his mother married an Englishman whose name was Stoppard. Not until 1946 did Tom, then nine years old, go to Britain. When he arrived he received his education, not in any of the country’s celebrated places of learning but in a small town in the north of England called Pocklington. After leaving school he became a journalist, devoting his leisure hours to fishing, cricket, and writing plays.

Just as astonishing as is Stoppard's ingenuity in employing all the dialectical byways of English to express philosophical paradox is the way in which his first play, “Rosencrantz and Buildenstern are Dead,” brought him fame and fortune not only in Britain, but all over the world.

With great wisdom, before any of his work had been professionally produced on an ambitious scale, Stopnard acquired an agent.

The agent sent “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” to Frank Hauser, who was at that time Director of the Oxford Playhouse.

Hauser did not present the play at the Playhouse, but he knew that a company of undergraduates called the Oxford Theatre Group was looking for an original play to present on the Fringe at the next Edinburgh Festival. So he gave them Stoppard’s script and at the 1966 festival “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” was presented by the group in a small hall. Many such amateur offerings are seen on the Fringe and are never heard of again. Local reviews of the play were not very good, but two London critics gave it enthusiastic notices, and the totally unexpected consequence of this was that the most prestigious of British theatrical organisations, the National Theatre, sent a representative to see it.

His report was so favourable that the play was put on by the National in 1967, where its author was voted the most promising playwright of the year. In New York soon afterwards it got an award as the year’s best play.

So with a play which originally no professional company would present, and whose striking merit was effectively recognised only by some Oxford students, Stoppard almost instantly became famous. Tall, dark, slim, athletic and still deeply interested in sport, Stoppard as a dramatist is concerned chiefly with the great metaphysical problems that have exercised philosophers down the ages.

In “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” he inquires into the nature of reality.

What, for example, really happens in “Hamlet”? We know what Shakespeare made of the events of the play; in his treatment of them they make a logical whole. But Shakespeare looked at the matter from Hamlet’s viewpoint, with the Prince in the centre and everything revolving round him. How would these events appear to someone not at their centre, but on the periphery: someone such as Guildenstern or Rosencrantz? This is the question that Stoppard answers.

To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern what happens in Shakespeare’s play seems totally baffling and incomprehensible. In Stoppard’s work there is a constant insistence on the difference between what happens or what appears to happen, and what ought to happen in the light of pure reason.

We know that when an arrow is accurately aimed at a target it does, in fact, hit or appear to hit that target. But logically this is an impossibility, and has been recognised as such for more than 2000 years.

This is the contradiction that haunts “Jumpers.” With bizarre invention, with a perpetually glittering wit, Stoppard deals with such questions in all his plays.

Together they represent a highwater mark in contemporary British theatre.