An apocryphal story has it that, when Harold Pinter sounded out Tom Stoppard to see if he’d support the campaign to rename the Comedy Theatre after him, Stoppard replied: “Wouldn’t it be easier to change your name to Harold Comedy?”
It would surely have tickled the witty, brilliant winner of a record seven Standard Theatre Awards that, eight months after his own death, it was announced the Duke of York’s would be renamed the Tom Stoppard. Neatly, the announcement came the day Carrie Cracknell’s excellent Old Vic production of his modern classic about sex, literature and the heat death of the universe reopened there.
