All the best dramatists extend the frontiers of drama. Beckett and Pinter did it in their way. The achievement of Tom Stoppard was to take seemingly esoteric subjects – from chaos theory to moral philosophy and the mystery of consciousness – and turn them into witty, inventive and often moving dramas. Theatre, Laurence Olivier once said, is a great glamoriser of thought. Stoppard confirmed that with his capacity to make ideas dance.
I was lucky enough to discover Stoppard early on. That was entirely thanks to Philip French who, aside from being a film critic, was also a BBC producer. In 1966 he asked me to give a short talk on two radio plays by a then little-known writer (“a punk journalist from Bristol” was how someone described him to me) called Tom Stoppard. In The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, an impoverished writer ran up an ever-escalating taxi fare. And in If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank, a bus driver tried to contact his wife who was the speaking clock. I was struck by the ingenuity of both plays and got to meet their young author.
