LONDON: "What's it about?" was a frequent response from bemused theatre-goers to "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", Tom Stoppard's first stage triumph. Tired of being asked, Stoppard is said to have replied to a woman outside a theatre on Broadway: "It's about to make me very rich."
He later questioned whether he had said "very", Hermione Lee writes in Stoppard's authorised biography, but he had undoubtedly managed to transform his previously precarious finances.
For every puzzled spectator, there were many more ecstatic fans and critics, dazzled by the wit, brilliant wordplay and sheer daring of a young playwright who had turned Shakespeare inside out and placed the spotlight, not on the eponymous Hamlet, but on two minor characters from the same play.
First performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966, the following year, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" made Stoppard, at the age of 29, the youngest playwright to be staged at the National Theatre in London. From there, the play went to Broadway and had more than 250 productions worldwide over its first decade.
Stoppard's career flourished for decades more, embracing stage, screen and radio, and demonstrating his thirst to tackle any subject -- from mathematics to Dadaist art to landscape gardening.
Stoppard's many other successes included "The Real Inspector Hound", which parodied stage whodunnits and sent up theatre critics, "Jumpers", a 1.5 million word epic that delighted and confused its public, and "Night and Day", a satire on the British media.
His densely packed, intricately constructed plays were based on extensive research. "Arcadia", in 1993, considered by many critics to be his masterpiece, blended chaos theory, Isaac Newton and the poet Lord Byron's love life.
The word Stoppardian, first recorded in 1978, meanwhile entered the Oxford English Dictionary. It refers to the use of verbal gymnastics while addressing philosophical concepts. The honours he won included an Oscar for co-authoring the screenplay of the 1998 hit film "Shakespeare in Love", and a record five Tony awards for Best Play.
He died at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family, his agent said Saturday.
Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the son of Eugen Straussler, a doctor, and Marta (or Martha), nee Beckova, who had trained as a nurse. The Jewish family fled the Nazis and moved to Singapore when he was an infant. Singapore in turn became unsafe. With his mother and elder brother Peter, he escaped to India. His father stayed behind and died while fleeing after Singapore fell to the Japanese.
In India, Marta Straussler married a British army major, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to England.
Boarding school followed at Pocklington in Yorkshire, where Tom Stoppard loved cricket more than drama and learned how to be British, which Major Stoppard considered the ultimate nationality.
The adult Stoppard, who rediscovered decades later the Jewish roots that he explored in his final play, would accuse his stepfather of "an innate antisemitism".
Credit: Reuters
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