Category: Tom Stoppard

THE REAL THING, is a play by Tom Stoppard, from the approximate middle period of his output – 1982. Prior to this it was the intellectual brilliance of his word play and juggling of various viewpoints that gave his work the effervescence of the best cold champagne that money could buy. Exhilarating nights in the theatre that made one feel smarter and wittier than one had suspected, known, of oneself ever being: ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (1968); JUMPERS (1972); TRAVESTIES (1976). THE REAL THING, had all the wit as usual, but at its centre it had, as well, a…

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is one of those famous plays by a now famous writer, Tom Stoppard, that every young, university actor wants to be in, or do a scene from. In the early nineteen sixties, having the idea that the King of England to whom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, were dispatched, was probably King Lear, Tom Stoppard wrote, whilst working in West Berlin, with several other writers on a Ford Foundation Award (as “cultural window dressing” for the allies!) a one-act comedy in verse called tentatively, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN MEET KING LEAR. A seed had been…

In the program notes Tom Stoppard writes: “Andre Previn and I met in 1974 while he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. One day not long afterwards he said that if ever I wanted to write something which needed a symphony orchestra, well, he had one. We agreed early on that we should try to go beyond a mere recitation for the concert platform, and also that we were not writing a piece for singers. In short, it was going to be a real play, to be performed in conjunction with, and bound up with, a symphony orchestra.”…

TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard was first presented in 1974 at the Aldwych Theatre in London for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stoppard’s work was last seen in Sydney in the MTC’s production of ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at the Sydney Theatre as part of the STC season last year. TRAVESTIES is a relatively early play by Stoppard, who is regarded, by some, to be one of the great living playwrights. Each of his plays is highly anticipated and highly debated. Like most of Stoppard’s work this is “History rewritten as fiction (and) it is the motif of TRAVESTIES, a work that exploits…

Opening in Melbourne in late February, Tom Stoppard’s ROCK AND ROLL, opened at the Sydney Theatre April 14th. It is sad to realise that this is the first new play by Stoppard that Australian audiences have seen since ARCADIA some 13 or 15 years ago. This is what? The result of the Impoverishment of the Arts in Australia? Impoverishment of Financial Support or Intellectual Thought ,or Artistic Vision? I hope it was the first. We recently had Mr Stoppard in Sydney to give a talk. It was a full house with an eager audience. How embarrassing that we have not…