chapter 6 Stoppard’s Theatricality
I am quite hot on the theatricality of theatre.1 stoppard ∵ Part of Stoppard’s impulse for dramatic plenitude is his awareness of the need for theatrical impact – ‘One is judged as a writer on the strength of what one manages to bring off theatrically’.2 For him there is no doubt that he is pro- ducing an event, not a text.3 ‘This distinction I’m trying to make between the text and the event. It’s very easy to talk about one’s plays as though they were texts whereas what they really are are attempts to transcribe an event which hasn’t happened yet. The text is a means towards an event’.4 There can be few playwrights who are more aware, in a practical sense, of both the constraints imposed and the possibilities offered by the respective media of the stage, in particular, and radio,5 television and film. The result with Stoppard is almost always a spectacle of some sorts,6 although he has been accused of ‘intellectual window dressing’.7
1 Stoppard, in an interview with Melvyn Bragg, ‘The South Bank Show’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 118. 2 extract from Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, 4th edition in T. Bareham (ed), Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers & Travesties, page 29. 3 William Demastes describes Stoppard as, ‘the consummate entertainer’. – W. Demastes, The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard, page 2. 4 Stoppard, in an interview with K. Kelly and W. Demastes, ‘The Playwright and the Professors: An Interview With Tom Stoppard’ in South Central Review, Volume 11, Number 4, Winter 1994. 5 Stoppard told Roger Bolton, ‘the potential of radio was something playful’. – Feedback, bbc Radio 4, 5 January 2016. 6 The spectacle should not be confused with the mayhem it often appears to be. Michael Bil- lington notes, ‘All art is, by definition, an attempt to order chaos, but Stoppard brings a li- brarian’s zeal to the business of coding and arrangement: deep down, I suspect, he’s a writer who loves order and control’. – M. Billington, Stoppard: the playwright, page 22. The title of John Fleming’s book, Stoppard’s Theatre Finding Order amid Chaos, suggests he has arrived at a similar conclusion. Paul Delaney adds, ‘Stoppard’s drama celebrates a realm beyond the material, a universe which however complex is not the least random but rather…is pervaded by order’. – P. Delaney, Tom Stoppard The Moral Vision of the Major Plays, page 62. See also his note 12, op cit, page 166. Daniel Jernigan also appears to arrive at a similar conclusion,
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Nevertheless, there is a pattern to the theatricality embodying a rationale which is, frequently, illustrative of or linked to the idea. Stoppard’s theatrical devices and his humour tend to achieve maximum effect when they reflect or enhance the themes in his plays. Jumpers is a fine example in which the seem- ing chaos actually has an explanation within the framework of the debate on morality. The incredible, radical, liberal Jumpers represent the philosophical gymnastics of the relativists, whose argument crumbles in the face of altruism just as their pyramid collapses when McFee is shot. Dotty’s moon songs reflect her sudden realisation of the localness of laws which were previously seen to be universal. George’s accidental slaughter of both his hare and tortoise8 illus- trates the moral question of good and bad. But, without the dramatic fireworks a Stoppard play would be little more than a lecture or an articulate debate on stage. At their best they are not only mechanisms for grabbing the audience’s attention (Maddie’s states of undress in Dirty Linen), providing entertainment (the magician in The Cherry Orchard) and amusement (the running joke of nearly inventions in the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) but are integrated into the vehicle (the Wildean aphorisms of Travesties) or are deployed to highlight part of the argument (the light experiment in Hapgood). In an article he wrote for The Times Literary Supplement in 1972 Stoppard makes it plain that he has a strong sense of the pragmatic when it comes to
although not quite in the same way – ‘In Stoppard’s ontology there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, and if only we stick around long enough, we will find out where everything goes’. – DK. Jernigan, Tom Stoppard Bucking the Postmodern, pages 40–41. Joan Fitzpatrick Dean comments, ‘Stoppard’s plays demonstrate the possibility of dealing logi- cally with an ostensibly disordered world’. – JF. Dean, Tom Stoppard Comedy As A Moral Ma- trix, page 53. Gabrielle Scott Robinson asserts that, ‘Disorder is the order of the day, which is reflected in the incoherence, the lack of sustained action in his plays’. – GS. Robinson, Plays Without Plot: The Theatre of Tom Stoppard. Neil Sammells’ analysis of Jumpers, Arcadia and The Real Thing also drives at the same point: ‘the deliberate artifice of (Jumpers’) construc- tion is – just as with Henry’s cricket bat in The Real Thing – its own point: a demonstration of pattern, order, certainty, skill, in a world which seems to want to do without them, qualities emblematized so dramatically in the climactic ‘dance to the music of time’ in Arcadia’. – N. Sammells, ‘The early stage plays’ in K. Kelly (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, page 115. John Bull’s view is, in one aspect, slightly contrary: ‘Uncertainty is all. This charac- terizes all Stoppard’s early work’. – J. Bull, ‘Tom Stoppard and politics’ in K. Kelly (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, page 138. 7 eg: Charles Isherwood’s review of The Invention of Love: ‘Much of the intellectual window dressing is lively and entertaining, although less would probably suffice for the play’s pur- poses’. – ‘“The Invention of Love”’ in Variety 382, 7 (2–8 April 2001) pages 28 and 31, quoted in H. Bloom (ed), Tom Stoppard, page 137. 8 Jumpers, page 81.