The China Mail - Exit stage left: playwright Tom Stoppard is dead

From his earliest hit "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" in 1966, through to 1993's "Arcadia" and "Leopoldstadt" in 2020, Stoppard engaged and amused theatre-goers with a highly individual brand of intellect.

His writing was often philosophical or scientific, but consistently funny, a distinctive style that gave rise to the term Stoppardian.

"I want to demonstrate that I can make serious points by flinging a custard pie around the stage for a couple of hours," the Czech-born Stoppard said in a 1970s interview.

"Theatre is first and foremost a recreation. But it is not just a children's playground; it can be recreation for people who like to stretch their minds."

"He has no apparent animus towards anyone or anything," said film and theatre director Mike Nichols, who directed the Broadway premiere of Stoppard's tale of marriage and affairs "The Real Thing".

"He's very funny at no one's expense. That's not supposed to be possible."

- Early escape -

Stoppard left school at 17 and would go on to win numerous awards on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 2014, he was crowned "the greatest living playwright" by the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

To non-theatre-goers, he is best remembered for his work in cinema, which included the "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" franchises and an Oscar in 1999 for his screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love", which scooped a total of seven Academy Awards that year.

Stoppard was married three times and had four sons, one of whom Ed Stoppard, an actor, performed in "Leopoldstadt".

Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler to Jewish parents in Zlin in 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia.

With the Nazi occupation, his parents escaped to Singapore, where his father died during World War II.

His mother's subsequent remarriage saw Tom and his brother take on their stepfather's name when they moved to Britain in 1946.

After leaving school, Stoppard became a journalist and later a playwright.

"Tom wrote short stories, and smoked to excess, and always worked at night," recalled fellow playwright Derek Marlowe, who lived in the same dilapidated house as Stoppard in early 1960s London.

"Every evening he would lay out a row of matches and say, 'Tonight I shall write 12 matches' -- meaning as much as he could churn out on 12 cigarettes."

Stoppard would remain a habitual smoker, describing it as "the dumb side of me".

- From stage to screen -

His breakthrough came with the overnight success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", a tragicomedy centred around two minor characters from Shakespeare's "Hamlet".

It moved to London's West End, before winning a Tony Award for best play in the United States.

Stoppard wrote several celebrated radio plays, then made his next big splash with "Jumpers" in 1972, a foray into the world of moral philosophy.

"Travesties" two years later, imagined a meeting between Lenin, James Joyce and poet and founder of the Dada movement Tristan Tzara, who all lived in Zurich in 1917.

More successes followed in the 1970s and 1980s, including "Arcadia", which in 2006 was one of four works shortlisted by the Royal Institution of Great Britain as the best book ever written about science.

Stoppard was knighted in 1997, a year before "Shakespeare in Love" took his name to a wider audience.

He was an uncredited writer on "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" and Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow".

- Jewish roots -

Stoppard was not fully aware of his Jewish heritage until the 1990s, when a Czech relative told him all four of his grandparents and three aunts had been killed in Nazi concentration camps.

It was a theme that only entered his work with "Leopoldstadt", which stepped away from the comedy of his earlier plays as it traced a Jewish family in Austria over six decades.

At its London premiere before coronavirus closed the theatres, The Standard newspaper described it as a "late masterwork... wise, witty and devastatingly sad".

Stoppard made no bones, however, about the joy of writing comedy.

"I really enjoy the laughter created by what I write, and actors in it," he said in a 2003 interview.

"Should you ever write a play, a comedy, sitting there while it's being performed, it is a delicious feeling knowing that something is coming up which is going to be deliciously enjoyed by everyone around you."

C.Smith--ThChM