On November 29, the world woke up to the devastating news that much-loved British playwright Tom Stoppard had passed away. Understandably, the news shocked the UK theater community, but it also sent an outpouring of grief among many of us stage artists around the world.
In popular culture, Stoppard has been immortalized by his Oscar win (Best Original Screenplay) for the 1998 period romantic comedy, Shakespeare in LoveAt that time, many people wondered who this strange man was, But for us theatre-valhallaJust a sample of the film’s dialogue, immediately featuring a clever turn of phrase that only Stoppard had, was enough. That award was an acknowledgment of his talent from the mainstream, but it also gave us a reason to smile smugly because we ‘knew’ about his mastery long before the film.
from still Shakespeare in Love (1998), starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes.
My first encounter with Stoppard’s work was the farce, on the razzleAn adaptation of another play, I later learned. But the strangeness of the scenes was brilliantly balanced by the engaging dialogue – full of satire, wit and double entenders. To my teenage brain, it was a goldmine. I loved the way he connected the words. Homophones allowed them to have hilarious exchanges like this:
“I love your niece”
“My knees, sir?”
Stoppard taught me that the real means of communication in the theater is not just rhetoric or beautiful description; This is a dialogue.
For most of us ‘Lit types’, college is usually where we first encounter Stoppard. rosencrantz And guildenstern is dead (1966) is a seminal work of absurdist literature, but unlike Samuel Beckett waiting for godot (1952), it felt much more accessible and recognizable. Existentialism made sense. When Atul Kumar finally staged his live version with actors on stilts at the NCPA Experimental Theater in Mumbai in 1998, I was spellbound. The play jumped off the page and became urgent, important.
Joshua McGuire and Daniel Radcliffe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are deadDirected by David Levox, London, 2017. , Photo Credit: Getty Images
Rock music and mathematical logic
What’s more, Stoppard was a contemporary playwright, a modern master who was still contributing to his own canon. This gave him an aura of coolness and gave us the poster-boy of theatre.
While in college, a dear friend introduced me to the absolute urgency of albert bridge – A drama about a philosophy major who is happier painting a bridge than dealing with his day-to-day tasks. Stoppard satirizes education, class conflict, corporate or government decision making, and even mathematics that is not attributable to humans. The friend eventually staged it as a college production at St. Xavier’s Auditorium in Mumbai in 1998, and working on it and watching the rehearsals impacted me in a very powerful way. I still quote lines from it to relate to my everyday experience. This is a play that I hoped would eventually be staged in Hindi, but I haven’t had the courage to do so yet.
Some plays of Tom Stoppard.
It is a pity that more of his work has not been staged in India, especially given the fact that he spent some of his youthful years in Darjeeling. This may be due to difficulty obtaining the rights, or perhaps changes/localization are not often encouraged. Other than rosencrantzOr real inspector houndThere are not many Indian productions.
Probably my favorite Stoppard memory is the production of rock n roll At the Duke of York Theatre, London in 2006. Aside from its catchy title or the fact that Brian Cox and Rufus Sewell were in the production, the real magic is that it’s a political drama, but about rock music. I don’t think I’ve ever paid so much for a theater ticket. It was a last minute impulse, and the seats had a ‘limited view’. But despite the barricade, I was transported seamlessly to Cambridge and Prague as the play talked about, and in particular, the role of rock music. pink Floyd Played a role in the Czech resistance against communism. Stoppard’s writing is well-researched, unusual in subject matter, and almost always feels urgent and necessary, even if it is set in a long-ago time.
I felt the same way when I saw it arcadia In London in 2009. Although the play was written in 1993, and talking about the early 1800s, the play somehow predicts the future. In an early scene, a character describes a leaf. And in doing so, she virtually presents the modern mathematical rationale for algorithms. The same algorithms that now control our entire lives. In some ways, the play is a tribute to the phrase ‘Science tells us how the world is, while the arts tell us how the world could be’.
absurd yet touching
A poster for NCPA’s 2022 production of Stoppard every good boy deserves a favorStarring Neil Bhoopalam and Denzil Smith in Mumbai.
The most recent Stoppard production I saw was the ambitious one at the National Center for the Performing Arts every good boy deserves a favor (2022). Much of the play is set in a prison cell, but it uses a full orchestra. It was set many years ago in Soviet Russia, but why do bureaucratic absurdities and totalitarian ideas appear, once again, so current, so… in India?
Stoppard was not only a playwright for the ages, he was also, in many ways, the moral conscience of our times. He spoke truth to power, but with humor and sarcasm. He made us realize that it wasn’t so His Characters who were trapped in absurd plots, but We Who were living in them.
A few years ago, while bringing to light a stage production of his tele-drama, a different peaceI remember having to stop because I was so overwhelmed by the interaction between a nurse matron and a patient in a hospital.
“I’m glad you feel at home.”
“I never felt it there”
On one hand, it didn’t make any sense. And yet it seemed to hold a very familiar feeling.
The magic of Stoppard was that he could be absurd and poignant at the same time.
The author is a theater director and shares Tom Stoppard’s love of drama, theater and cricket.
published – December 04, 2025 04:37 PM IST