Tom Stoppard

The great modern dramatist has passed on.

I've seen a number of his plays, but mostly when I was in college: I have this vague memory of signing on as an usher for a whole series of Stoppard plays in San Francisco. I don't remember them very well. The only ones I've seen more recently are Arcadia, The Invention of Love (which I saw in its first production in London, with John Wood in it), and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (most recently as a student production).

Besides the film of Rosencrantz, which I didn't think worked very well, I've seen two movies he contributed to the scripts of: Shakespeare in Love, which I cherish despite its playing with history in a way I normally find annoying - Stoppard is so clever with this I forgive him anything; and Brazil, a film I find fundamentally incoherent, though I doubt anyone would agree with me on this.

I started my play-reading group so that we could read Rosencrantz aloud, something I'd wanted to do for a long time. Four people: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, The Player, and one for everything else, since everything else is just segments from Hamlet, plus stage directions.