Goodbye to a great playwright. Stoppard was 88. We were blown away when we saw "Travesties" at the American Players Theater a few years ago.
[In] Travesties (1975)... Lenin, the Dadaist Tristan Tzara and James Joyce meet in Zurich during the First World War and become involved in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
APT also produced "The Importance of Being Earnest," so we took that in, then returned to see "Travesties" again. I think that may have been the best theatrical production I've seen in my entire life.
I've also seen "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (based on "Hamlet") and "Arcadia," both at APT. And I saw his last play "Leopoldstadt," in New York City. If you click on my "Tom Stoppard" tag you'll see what I think are some interesting details.
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22 comments:
Everything written is fiction.
yes, but fiction 'has to make sense' at least internally,,
Shakespeare has writer's block and it's keeping him from scoring with the ladies.
Doctor: "How long has it been?"
Shakespeare holds his hands six inches apart.
Stoppard was one of the giants. A great writer, playwright, screenwriter.
Was I supposed to find Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead absurd? I just thought it was a great play.
RIP.
A friend put on “The Real Inspector Hound” for his directing class final at our small college. The guy who was to play “The Body” failed to show up on time. So I was pulled out of the audience to be the body. I’ve heard the whole play, facing backstage, but I’ve never seen it.
he was brilliant. my favorite, The Real Thing and TV Parade's end. His plays were wonderful even if you just read them. Wonderful command of language and nuance. Not many like him.
I had the honor of seeing the original NY run of "Travesties" with John Wood in the 70's. Amazing play. I saw "Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead" at Circle in the Square around the same time. I would like to see them both again but haven't seen them produced in South Florida.
"The guy who was to play “The Body” failed to show up on time. So I was pulled out of the audience to be the body."
A likely story... I mean the part about the guy who was to play the body not showing up.
He was brilliant, but I still don't think much of "Shakespeare in Love."
I love this guy’s work.
Arcadia is my favorite
I enjoyed Shakespeare In Love simply for the line, "The proud tower of my genius has fallen," followed by his confessor's knowing "Hmm!"
Strange how the Times piece downplays Stoppard's Jewish roots: "a great-grandparent was Jewish." All four of his grandparents were Jewish and murdered by the Nazis. So both of his parents were Jewish (albeit non-practicing), which better explains their family leaving Czechoslovakia in 1938 for Singapore (in fact his father's employer, Bata, transferred its Jewish employees there), and then to India. From an old Guardian story on Stoppard:
"Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, the son of Eugen Straüssler, a doctor with the Bata shoe company, and Martha Beckova. Both parents were Jewish, though neither was a practising Jew. All four of Stoppard's grandparents died in the Holocaust. When the Nazis moved into Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich sell-out, the Straüsslers fled to Singapore, one of several places where the Bata company was relocating its employees. Two years later the family had to flee again when the Japanese assault began, but this time without Eugen, who stayed behind (as a doctor he knew he would be needed) to aid the defence of Singapore. More than 50 years later, Stoppard discovered that his father drowned in February 1942, when the ship in which he was finally escaping was bombed by the Japanese. On the same day, Dr Straüssler's family - wife Martha, eldest son Petr and five-year-old Tomás (his mother called him Tomik) - were reaching Bombay, where Tomik/Tomás/ Tommy/Tom would be reborn, an English-speaking schoolboy in Raj India."
Apparently Stoppard was unaware of much of this, including his own Jewishness, until he was around 60, after his mother died. So it presumably didn't influence his work up until that point. But it must have been his inspiration for "Leopoldstadt," his last play.
Sorry, meant to include the link to that 2002 Guardian piece on Stoppard. It also includes this anecdote, after the successful London opening of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead":
"What is this play about?" he was asked on television. "It's about to make me very rich," he replied.
He never missed a beat.
Thank you James K
I saw a production of his play "Rock 'n' Roll", about the role rock music played in the anti-Communist movement in Czechoslovakia from 1968 to 1989. An excellent play and thoroughly anti-Communist.
I was assigned Stoppard in the 1970s, and my father later gave me a copy of "After Magritte," which he had performed in community theater. Marvelous ending. From there I read just about all of him. I don't see movies so I cannot speak to that, but I liked everything except "The Coast of Utopia."
I was thrilled that he included math and physics in his plays, including a brilliant use of the Seven Bridges of Konigsburg in "Hapgood."
I think the Czech Jewishness was not mentioned because it was tied to the development of his anticommunist politics, and then on to an idiosyncratic conservatism. He became unpopular with many for that in later years.
Travesties (1975) - I'll take a look, it seems interesting.
As Stoppard, I liked "R&G are dead", funny and clever. But for the most part I was unimpressed with his serious plays. His adaptations for film and TV were OK, but these sort of things live and die by the original source material.
I used to get him mixed up with Frederick Raphael. Given that Pinter won a Nobel Prize, I'm shocked he missed that honor.
"I write fiction because it’s a way of making statements I can disown, and I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself."
Dang- I wish I wrote that.
I’m just going to say it: Stoppard could be genius many, many times.
And I put my no-budget film “Diplomatika” up against some of his best, and it holds up line-for-line.
Yes: I am saying that.
Diplomatika: https://vimeo.com/1097401417?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
Alternate World 1962 Cold War paranoia, brittle and darkly funny. You might like it, if you don’t need Someone Approved to Like It First for you.
EISEN: It appears that Region Three is experiencing the beginning of an uprising.
KOHL: Which faction are we supporting?
EISEN: All of them.
KOHL: (nods) Instability lets us keep our options open.
EISEN: Exactly. (pause) Unfortunately, one of the factions seems to be a front group for a reconstituted Nazi organization.
KOHL: Are we supporting them?
EISEN: No. (pause) Well, technically: yes. Some initial funding has been provided.
KOHL: I find it interesting that alliances continually change, but the Nazis are always the bad guys.
EISEN: Give it time, Kohl: give it time.
I am Laslo.
People will want to see Stoppard's plays 100 years from now.
Handmade tales? Perhaps.
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