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Every one of the outstanding dramatists broaden the boundaries of theatre. Beckett and Pinter achieved this in their unique way. The accomplishment of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly obscure themes – ranging from the science of chaos to moral philosophy and the enigma of the mind – and convert them into clever, imaginative and often touching theatrical works. Drama, Sir Laurence Olivier once said, is a significant glamoriser of ideas. Stoppard confirmed that with his capacity to make ideas dance.

Initial Discovery

Fortunately for me to come across Stoppard early on. That was completely thanks to a man named Philip French, who, besides being a film critic, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he invited me to present a mini-speech on two audio dramas by a at that time little-known writer described as Tom Stoppard. In Dominic Boot's Dissolution, an impoverished writer accumulated 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 voice of the time. I was struck by the cleverness of both plays and eventually met their youthful author.

It says much for Stoppard’s grace of spirit that even after I had gone on television in 1968 and given a critical premiere review of The Real Inspector Hound – which I currently admire – he was impeccably gracious. But one thing people forget about Stoppard is that, as an former journalist himself, he knew the ways of the journalistic world.

Cerebral Virtuoso and Heartfelt Substance

From the beginning, Stoppard was celebrated as an intellectual gymnast: a man who was propelled by ideas as much as by individuals and narrative. But, just as we belatedly came to realise that Pinter was always a political playwright, so we in time came to see that there was an emotional undertow to Stoppard’s intellectual concepts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was praised for its cleverness in constructing a drama out of two peripheral characters from Hamlet, but repeated viewings reveal that it is about how we are all prey of arbitrary circumstances leading to our demise. I remember the actor John Wood, who had played Guildenstern on Broadway and who became an definitive Stoppard actor, saying to me, “In Tom’s plays, the word is all. The word is pushing back the quiet, beating back the obscurity … I think this is what makes his plays so emotional and even heartbreaking.”

The distinctive fusion of conceptual boldness and emotional substance was also present in Stoppard’s 1972 success, Jumpers. This, ultimately, was a play that posed a major philosophical question: whether public morals was a instilled reaction to history or whether ethical rules obeyed an unchanging, heaven-sent law. Not your average dramatic theme, but here the topic of a lecture being developed by the play’s main character, George Moore. But the more one experienced the play, the more one grasped that it was also about the anguish of a fractured marriage and the risks of a unraveling society in which astronauts were scrapping on the moon and a ex- minister of agriculture had been made Canterbury archbishop.

Meticulous Preparation and Emotional Revelation

Stoppard’s accomplishment – one he had in common with playwright Michael Frayn – was to show that audiences were open to plays about complicated ideas. His work was also meticulously investigated. I remember, shortly before Jumpers, running into him on the steps of the a library in London where he was clutching a stack of books that reached up to his chin. “What is that?” I asked. “My next play,” he responded.

With time, the sentiment of his plays became ever more apparent. The key moment arguably came with Real Thing (1982) which stands up better than the majority of his plays to restaging. It asks a whole host of queries such as whether any civic duty is the consequence of private derangement and whether notions such as fairness and patriotism exist outside our perceptions of them. But beneath this – and what makes the play so accessible – is a acute realization of the ecstasy of love and the torment of betrayal.

Even Arcadia (1993), which explores predestination and volition, classicism and the Romantic movement, and a myriad of other things, succeeds because it is profoundly touching. Thoughts and feeling flawlessly come together in a moment where a brilliant young girl, Thomasina, mourns the demise of past cultures to which her teacher responds: “Scientific insights seen briefly and forgotten will have their renaissance.” And that is just what happens, in that Thomasina’s groundbreaking revision of the Newtonian universe survives her tragically truncated life.

Debating the Efficacy of Art

Stoppard’s talent as a dramatist was infrequently doubted. What was discussed, especially in the beginning, were his doubts about the power of art: something he frequently talked about 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 qualms about that. To refer obliquely to Travesties [his 1974 play], Importance of Being Earnest is meaningful but it avoids serious topics.”

I believe he was entirely wrong about that since the play by Wilde presents a continuous critique on wealth, marriage, values, class, the weakening of the upper class and the dominance of business. But Stoppard weakened his own position by writing a series of works that grapple to powerful results with the violation of human rights by authoritarian regimes. One of the most astonishing was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, first performed at the Festival Hall in 1977. It depicted a Russian dissident incorrectly pronounced crazy and locked in a room with an authentic madman who thinks he is in control of an symphony. It was startling both to see the entire LSO on stage and to witness Stoppard unmasking the harsh ridiculousness of Russian tyranny with grim wit. As I noted at the time, “force is met with sarcasm and strictness with a