Playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard, a four-time Tony winner for his plays “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Travesties,” “The Real Thing” and “The Coast of Utopia” and an Oscar winner for his script to “Shakespeare in Love,” has died, according to The BBC. He was 88.
“We’re deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family,” United Agents told Sky News. “He’ll be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generous spirit and his profound love of the English language.”
Stoppard, who fled Czechoslovakia as a child during Nazi rule and eventually settled in England, was a master stylist of language, perhaps best known for his clever wordplay. Writing for the stage, screen and radio, he explored themes such as betrayal, politics and identity, the last of which was heavily influenced by his own experience of belonging to two cultures. The adjective “Stoppardian” was coined to describe work that uses wit and comedy to further philosophical themes.
Stoppard broke into the British theater scene in 1966 with his play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” about two minor characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” His tendency toward comedy and verbal gymnastics, however, made Stoppard a target — albeit a respected one — of critics early in his career.
“Stoppard’s plays have been sometimes dismissed as pieces of clever showmanship, lacking in substance, social commitment, or emotional weight,” said critic Dennis Kennedy.
Not until later plays such as “The Real Thing” (1982) and “Arcadia” (1993) did Stoppard really delve into emotional depths, which he allowed to mingle with, if not subsume, his dazzling wordplay.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” drew mixed notices at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 but went on to be produced by the National Theater Company at the Old Vic and later on Broadway, where Stoppard earned his first Tony for best play in 1968. Stoppard also adapted the script for a 1990 film of the same name that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
In the 1970s, Stoppard found success with “Jumpers” (1972), a satire about the field of academic philosophy, which is compared to a gymnastics competition; and “Travesties” (1974), about a chance meeting in 1917 Zurich between Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce and Dadaist Tristan Tzara. Both plays earned kudos in the U.K., and “Travesties” went on to claim a Tony in 1976.
During the 1970s, Stoppard tweaked political philosophies and language in plays such as “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” (1977), about Soviet dissidents, and “Night and Day” (1978), about journalistic ethics; “The Real Thing” (1982), a play within a play about adultery, moved critics to declare that Stoppard had touched a nerve and written something much more personal than his previous work. In 1984, he won the Tony for “The Real Thing,” which garnered another Tony in 2000 for play revival.
During the 1990s, his plays “Arcadia” and “The Invention of Love” (1997) drew kudos. “The Coast of Utopia,” Stoppard’s 2002 trilogy of plays, delved into the lives of people during pre-revolution Russia between 1833 and 1866. The plays, which totaled nine hours onstage, were directed by Trevor Nunn and played in repertory at London’s Olivier Theater. The opus moved to Broadway in 2006 and won the Tony for best play in 2007.
Stoppard followed that achievement with “Rock ’n’ Roll” (2006), another look at artistic dissent against the Soviets, this time in his native Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Mixing politics with music, Stoppard’s characters question a repressive regime and so-called Soviet ideals.
After an absence of nine years, Stoppard returned in 2015 with the uber-cerebral play “The Hard Problem,” the title of which refers to the question of whether matter can be separated from consciousness. Reviewing the London production, the New York Times’ Ben Brantley said the play is neither dull nor clumsy — “There are more than flickers of the lightning wit and intellectual energy you associate with Mr. Stoppard. But it’s the first work I have known from this ever-questing dramatist in which the ideas overwhelm the characters.”
But while the playwright generally delved into more personal matters in his later career, whether it was marriage or cultural identity, Stoppard still resisted self-examination. “That part of yourself in your work is expressed willy-nilly, without your cooperation, motivation or collusion,” he told U.K. newspaper The Guardian in 2008. “You can’t help being what you write and writing what you are.”
On the film front, Stoppard co-wrote the Oscar-nominated script for “Brazil” (1985) and adapted J.G. Ballard’s novel for Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” (1987). In addition to “Shakespeare in Love,” screenplays since 1990 included adaptations of John le Carre’s “The Russia House,” E.L. Doctorow’s “Billy Bathgate,” Robert Harris’ novel “Enigma” and Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” The last of these, released in 2012, was a stylized, expressionist take on the Russian classic set mostly in a mocked-up theater that divided the critics. For HBO, he adapted Ford Madox Ford’s novel “Parade’s End” into a well-reviewed 2012 miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch, on which he also served as an executive producer. He followed these projects with an adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s bestselling romance novel “Tulip Fever.”
Stoppard also worked as an uncredited script doctor in Hollywood, working on films including “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (George Lucas and Spielberg wanted him to pen the fourth entry in the franchise), “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” “Sleepy Hollow” and “K-19: The Widowmaker.”
Stoppard was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, the son of a Jewish doctor with the Bata shoe company. Shortly before the Nazi occupation, Bata owner Thomas J. Bata helped transfer his Jewish employees to other branches of his business all over the world.
On March 15, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Stoppard’s family fled to Singapore. Before the Japanese occupation of Singapore, Tomas, his mother and his brother, Petr, fled once again, while their father stayed and served as a physician.
It was not until more than 50 years later that Stoppard found out that his father had drowned in February 1942 after the ship he was on was bombed by the Japanese. At the time, the then 5-year-old Stoppard was arriving in Bombay with his mother and brother to begin life as an English-speaking family.
Moving from Bombay to Darjeeling, Stoppard’s mother met and married British citizen Major Kenneth Stoppard in 1945 before heading to England the following year. Both boys took his name.
Using his signature wordplay to refer to himself as a “bounced Czech,” Stoppard relayed, in a 1999 Talk magazine article, that his late stepfather believed that “to be born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life.”
Stoppard did indeed embrace his Britishness, attending boarding school in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire and excelling at cricket. An average student, Stoppard opted not to attend a university, instead joining the Western Daily Press in Bristol as a journalist at age 17.
During his work as a reporter and drama critic, Stoppard met actor Peter O’Toole and became friendly with people who worked at the Bristol Old Vic Theater. He then moved to London in 1962 to become a full-time writer, combining work as a journalist with writing for radio and TV, and wrote the novel “Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon.”
The Writers Guild of America honored Stoppard with its Laurel Award for Screen for lifetime achievement in writing for motion pictures in February 2013.
Stoppard was married and divorced twice. He is survived by four sons, Oliver, digital artist Barny, Bill and actor Ed.
