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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.
Dirty Deeds in the Drawing Room, writes director, JOHN
TURNBULL
Hard
on the glittering heels of his first major success with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard again set about subverting a well-recognised
theatrical scenario. But instead of a pair of attendant lords, the main
characters this time are outside the action of the play altogether (or so it
seems) - a bizarre pair of critics, Moon and Birdboot, on an opening night. He
said: “Dislocation of an audience’s assumptions is an important part of what I
like to write”
Not so much a play-within-a-play as a play outside a play, The Real Inspector
Hound ambushes the audience with the inversion of theatrical conventions and
Stoppard’s usual scintillating display of verbal fireworks. And after hearing
his wicked pastiche of critical jargon it almost impossible to read any review
of anything with a straight face.
But here are none of the philosophical explorations, the scientific propositions
or political statements of much of his later work. He makes no attempt to prove
anything, improve anything, explore “the nature of identity” or, as Moon might
say, to give us “the human condition”.
Stoppard said himself that the play does not aspire to be anything other than it
is. Nevertheless, one critic, possibly a disciple of Moon, described it as “an
object of pure, virtuoso craft and display, as luxuriously self sufficient as a
Fabergé Easter Egg …as nearly perfect in its kind as a P G Wodehouse plot; tiny,
ludicrous and beautiful as an ivory Mickey Mouse…”
First produced in 1968 (and at the GWT three years later) The Real Inspector
Hound has been delighting audiences worldwide ever since. We hope it will
delight you.
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