After Magritte

In Performance: 12th-19th January 2008

Tom Stoppard? Who is he? asks BILL BRAY

If any playwright might claim the right to an identity crisis it would have to be Tom Stoppard.

When he first burst upon the theatre scene in 1967 with the National Theatre production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead an examination of the background and training that gave rise to this startling play were part of the voracious need to place the newcomer in his niche. We learnt that he had been a journalist in Bristol since leaving school at 17; he was not the product of any university and was 30 years old. He had already produced work for TV, radio and provincial theatre, but none had given him the fame and fortune that Rosencrantz brought.

As he produced more work we learnt more about him. He was born in Czechoslovakia in July 1937; his family moved to Singapore to escape the Nazis and then to India, fleeing from the Japanese, although his father was killed. In 1946 his mother married a British army officer, Kenneth Stoppard, and they came to England.

Stoppard's work has always been language-centred, while individual plays reflect his passion for human rights and some reflect his hatred of the oppressive old regimes of Eastern Europe. He used his cosmopolitan background and his knowledge of European languages to translate and adapt the works of Schnitzler, Nestroy (On the Razzle) and his friend, Czech president, Vaclav Havel. Not all his plays are political. He has dabbled in the various fashionable movements in theatre.

The two one-acts in our next presentation reflect the Theatre of the Absurd although they are not obscure and are intended as comedies. The Real Inspector Hound is a

satire on theatre critics, lush pasture, indeed, for taking the mickey! The critics, Moon and Birdboot, become involved in the play they are watching, with ludicrous results. The ridiculous capers of the characters outside the Tate Gallery (before it became Tate Britain), where a Magritte exhibition is taking place, are the subject of After Magritte in which Stoppard takes on surrealist art.

Stoppard, who was 70 in July and is regarded as a National Treasure, has been given a knighthood. A recent major work from 2002, The Coast of Utopia scored a great success at the National Theatre and, more recently, in New York. It is a three-part play about Russian political philosophers who were exiles in 19th century London. Last year Rock and Roll mixed politics and pop music. He has also had recent success with the screenplay of the film The Bourne Ultimatum.

What’s it all about, Tom? writes IAN PRING, director

“Neither play is about anything grander than itself.” Stoppard’s description of the Magritte/Hound duo of one-act plays had me taken in at first. But after more careful reading and several weeks of rehearsing, it’s clear to me that After Magritte is about a great deal more than that.

Not that you’d think this from the opening. The curtain rises on a baffling scene, involving oddly-balanced lampshades, a door barricaded with furniture and an ironing board being put to a rather odd use. We then hear an argument between husband and wife, about an unusual event they have just seen, and of which they have two completely different interpretations. Enter a pompous, manic police inspector, accusing the couple of a variety of crimes. Throw in a tuba-obsessed old lady, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the middle of a Monty Python sketch.

But this is Tom Stoppard, and there’s a rigorous intellectual logic behind it all, the clue lying in the eponymous artist, whose surrealistic paintings attract devotees and denigrators in equal measure. After Magritte is a farce, but not as we commonly know it. The mistaken identities and misunderstandings happen not on-stage, but off-stage, or in the minds of the characters. In conventional farce, the action is non-stop and relentless; in this play, the action is described by the characters. And each one of them has a completely different take on it.

All this might be quasi-intellectual twaddle in the hands of a lesser writer, but this is Stoppard, and the play is full of the verbal wit and ridiculous events of the sort that made On the Razzle such a hit with GWT audiences in 2006. It’s a tiny gem of a play, full of crackling dialogue and mad characters. And what’s it about? I could tell you, but you may have a completely different view, so come and see it and decide for yourself.