How to write a Tom Stoppard play

Because I know there's so much love for him here:



I'm currently working on The Coast of Arcadia

Updated On: 1/27/15 at 06:03 AM

Step 1: Write a whole bunch of uninteresting blather
Step 2: Do this for 3 unending hours
Step 3: Be called a genius

Also works if you're Harold Pinter

Because he actually is a genius, which people who are smart -- like you, Reg -- can see that.

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Updated On: 1/27/15 at 12:29 PM

He's undoubtedly a very intelligent man, maybe a genius who am I to say. On the other hand, after having endured the nine hours of COAST OF UTOPIA, the horror of that revival of JUMPERS and the unspeakable three hour agony of ROCK N ROLL I can say that he's also a playwright whose work I'm not even remotely interested in ever sitting through again -- he's wasted enough of my time in phony erudition and bloated overlong historical pageantry -- ROCK N ROLL evidently meant a lot to him, being Czech and all, but he was never once able to make me give half a damn about any of what was happening on that stage.

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Updated On: 1/27/15 at 12:58 PM

I do not get the desire to mock him for his intelligence.

Many audiences (particularly on this side of the pond) resent intellectualism in art and consider any work that doesn't provide easy answers or offer tidy resolutions to be a failure. Stoppard operates outside of the "get your people in a tree" structure of playwriting that most people find comforting and entertaining, and he's not afraid to be the smartest person in the room. Hence, some people mock and question the very things that make his work so interesting, inventive, and important to others. (Either that, or you're just a kid who's trying to sound smart by casting a few wildly generalized stones at a venerated artist.)

To dislike Stoppard's work is a matter of personal opinion, but to question his skill is another bag of rice.

"And it was Stoppard, let's not forget, who is credited with the screenplay for Spielberg's appalling film of EMPIRE OF THE SUN, which turns J.G. Ballard's horrifying masterpiece about a young man's experiences during WWII into a tidy little story about a boy who wants his Mommy."

Talk about cherry-picking. Man's gotta eat.

What is "would-be verbal dexterity", anyway? Are you saying that Stoppard has no verbal dexterity?

You don't like him, fine - I don't get the vitriol.

Stoppard's reliance on wit and meta theatrics above all else has made him, in my opinion, the most important comedic playwright since Neil Simon. Without Simon, the great explosion of the sitcom in the 90s out of the eighties mold and towards a better written and more expansive form would be impossible. Without Stoppard, the trend in the 2000s towards meta humor and wit above emotion and character realism would have been just as unlikely. He's to praise and blame for Community, 30 Rock, the increasingly self-aware and audience-baiting later years of Glee, and so many more.

Just for sh*ts and giggles. I remember reading Brantley's hysterical praise of one of Stoppard's plays, one that I'd found particularly lacking, and wondered what the hell Stoppard had on Brantley to get such reviews written -- such high praise of such a dreadful play (I believe it was the agonizing ROCK N ROLL which was reallly the last straw for me as far as Sir Tom is concerned) it seemed to go beyond mere fanboy worship.

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Updated On: 1/27/15 at 04:00 PM

But that play was well-received all around. So, even if you found Brantley's praise particularly enthusiastic, it's not like he was an outlier.

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No doubt, but Brantley's review was particularly bizarrely over-enthusiastic, it was one of those "I wish I'd seen the play Brantley saw, they were performing the 95 minute play in a 3 hour package the night I sat through it" situations. I've come to think of Stoppard as the Clint Eastwood of Broadway -- producing such dull work that gets such extravagant praise from so many.

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Oh, some guy I know.

"And it was Stoppard, let's not forget, who is credited with the screenplay for Spielberg's appalling film of EMPIRE OF THE SUN, which turns J.G. Ballard's horrifying masterpiece about a young man's experiences during WWII into a tidy little story about a boy who wants his Mommy."

I choose to give Spielberg some of the blame there--simply because it fits his trajectory much more than Stoppard's. I also know that while Stoppard wrote the original first draft, with Ballard, the main script that was filmed was by Menno Meyjes who Spielberg liked after getting him to write The Color Purple. Which says a lot (well, at least for me--I wasn't a fan of the adaptation of Purple script wise, either.) So much goes on with scripts for major Hollywood pictures, who knows (Wiki says Stoppard did do a final polish, as he later did for Meyjes script for Last Crusade,) but I would hardly think of Empire of the Sun as representative of Stoppard's work.

His adaptations are hit or miss for me, though I like his Russia House screenplay. His recent screenplay for Anna Karenina didn't work for me--again, though, I blame the direction just as much, but I thought his TV adaptation of Parade's End--a very difficult series to adapt--was masterful, even if it seemed to take too long for many audiences to get into.

I admit I have not been as enamoured with his original plays since Arcadia which I think was over 20 years back, but I still always find them worthwhile. But, of course, a lot of this (all of this?) is personal taste

Roscoe, do you think it's possible that Brantley liked the play as much as his review indicated?

That's a sincere, not snarky, question.

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