Czech and English playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, née Tomáš Sträussler, has passed away at the age of 88. His death was confirmed by his representatives at United Agents, who wrote in a statement: "We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family."
Stoppard led a prolific life as a writer of both plays and films. He was a playwright of London's National Theater, and is one of the most produced playwrights internationally in the world. His plays included Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Coast of Utopia, and Arcadia. He also cowrote the screenplay for the Best Picture Oscar-winning film Shakespeare in Love. Stoppard's most recent play on Broadway was the critically acclaimed 2022 production of Leopoldstadt, which earned six Tony Awards in 2023, including Best Play. With Leopoldstadt, he became the most Tony Award-winning playwright in theatrical history, with five Best Play Tonys.
In acknowledgement of his vast success and contributions to artistic culture in England and beyond, Stoppard was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Though much of his work explored themes such as human rights, cultural identity, political theory, and freedom, he did not describe himself as a political playwright. On the contrary, as he wrote in London's Sunday Times in 1968: "Some writers write because they burn with a cause which they further by writing about it...I burn with no causes. I cannot say that I write with any social objective. One writes because one loves writing, really."
Stoppard's early life and childhood was one of displacement, a theme later explored in his work. Stoppard was born July 3, 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, from which he and his family fled as Jewish refugees in World War II. His father was a doctor employed by a shoe manufacturing company, a core structure of Zlín's workforce and economy. As the German invasion became imminent, the company quickly transferred their Jewish employees to other branches of the business across Europe, and thus, Stoppard's family was able to flee on the very day the Nazi's invasion of Czechoslovakia began in March 1939. From there, Stoppard's family went to Singapore just before the Japanese occupation began Afterwards, he, his brother, and mother fled once again to Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas, where Stoppard would attend boarding school for several years. Stoppard's father stayed behind in Singapore to provide medical assistance for those resisting, and died about three years later. Stoppard did not know the cause of his father's death for quite some time, and believed that he was killed in captivity as a prisoner of war. He later discovered his father drowned on a ship that was bombed by Japanese forces as he was trying to flee Singapore.
Stoppard assumed the name "Tom" in the Darjeeling boarding school alongside his brother, Petr, who took on the name Peter. The Mount Hermon School was a co-educational American school. Stoppard did not retain much memory from this period of his childhood, and upon learning the details later on in life about his years in India, he began to incorporate this into his work, including his play Indian Ink.
In 1945, Stoppard's mother remarried with Kenneth Stoppard, a major in the British Army. The elder Stoppard adopted young Stoppard and his brother, who received his last name. They moved to Nottingham, England, in 1946.
Stoppard was raised in England from this point on, where he felt he earned the title of being an "honorary Englishman," with a new name and a second language which would now become his primary language in speaking. He once stated, "I fairly often find I'm with people who forget I don't quite belong in the world we're in. I find I put a foot wrong—it could be pronunciation, an arcane bit of English history—and suddenly I'm there naked, as someone with a pass, a press ticket."
He attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire and the Pocklington School in the East Riding of Yorkshire, before leaving school at 17 to work as a journalist for Bristol's Western Daily Press. Never attending college, he gained immense real-world experience instead, working at the paper from 1954 until 1958, at which point he departed to join the Bristol Evening World as their feature writer, humor columnist, and theatre critic. During this time, he formed friendships with members of the Bristol Old Vic theatre company, including director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole.
Throughout his tenure as a journalist, Stoppard wrote short radio plays in his free time, eventually completing his first full-length play in 1960, A Walk on the Water, which later had its title changed to Enter a Free Man. It follows George Riley, a dreamer, unsuccessful inventor, and father who fantasizes about leaving his family behind to pursue his unrealistic goals—namely the invention of a "reusable envelope." The play explores the burden and strain George's ambitions places on his family. Enter a Free Man was first staged in Hamburg, Germany, before being broadcasted through British Independent Television in 1963.
After his playwriting debut, Stoppard continued to work as a theatre critic, this time in London for Scene Magazine. He wrote under the pen name of William Boot, all the while continuing to write plays of his own. In 1964, he received a Ford Foundation artistic grant which allowed him to stay in a Berlin mansion for 5 months, immersing himself in an environment from which he penned a one-act play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, an early version of what would become Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The work puts the spotlight on two of Shakespeare’s minor characters as they wrestle with fundamental questions of identity, loss, fate, friendship, and the absurdity of existence. As they hurtle towards their imminent demise, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern unlock what it means to be truly alive.
Throughout the early 1960s, he continued to create several works for radio, television and the theatre, including "M" is for Moon Among Other Things, A Separate Peace, and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank. In 1966, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead received an acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and promptly transferred to the Old Vic in 1967 for a run with the National Theatre. The play was an instant hit, and Stoppard became a sensation. It transferred to Broadway the same year, earning Stoppard recognition from across the pond, his Broadway debut, and first Tony Award.
Throughout the remainder of the decade, Stoppard penned the plays Jumpers and Travestities—both eventually staged on Broadway in the 1970s. He even released a novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon, which employed tropes and themes that would later be utilized in his other plays.
In the 1980s, amidst his success as a playwright, Stoppard found other avenues of artistic work, translating Polish and Czech absurdist plays into English. He became inspired by these works, which influenced his plays from that point on. Notably, his play The Real Thing premiered in 1982, which used the concept of "a play within a play" to examine the life of fictional playwright Henry and actress Annie, who have an affair, leaving their respective partners, then ultimately marry and have affairs once again. The 1984 Broadway transfer was a smash success, starring Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, and Christine Baranski in her early career. New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich declared the work to be "the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years." It eventually won five Tony Awards, including Best Play.
The 1980s brought on the rise of Stoppard's screenwriting career as well, with his co-writing alongside Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown to create Brazil, a satirical science fiction comedy, which received nearly universal positive reviews. From this, he quickly rose in acclaim, earning the opportunity to write the script for two Steven Spielberg films: Empire of the Sun, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third installment of the beloved adventure series starring Harrison Ford.
His skills at screenwriting eventually led him to write Shakespeare in Love, a fictional take on a young William Shakespeare and what may have led him to write Romeo and Juliet—it was released in 1998 and remains beloved today. It featured an ensemble cast including Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Judi Dench. For it, he received an Academy Award win win for Best Original Screenplay, in addition to a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award. Shakespeare in Love was eventually adapted by Lee Hall into a play, first running in the West End in 2014; though it's played regionally, it's never played New York.
Later, in 2012, Stoppard adapted Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for Joe Wright's acclaimed adaption starring Keira Knightly. In the same year, he also wrote a five-part limited television series, Parade's End, which aired on BBC Two starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall. Like much of his screenwriting work, it also earned widespread acclaim. Stoppard also contributed to Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, though Stoppard received no formal credit in either projects.
His other notable play credits in the 20th century include Night and Day, Rough Crossing, Dalliance, The Invention of Love, and most notably, Arcadia (1993), which has since been regarded as Stoppard's masterpiece. Nearly two decades after its debut, Johann Hari published a feature in the Independent declaring it to perhaps be the greatest play of its age, writing: "One genre seems to have solidified as the decades pass into bona fide masterpieces, and will perhaps define that period: the play of ideas...Standing above them all, making the case for the entire genre, is perhaps the greatest play of its time: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard."
In the 2000s, Stoppard's career did not falter, with a number of runs both on Broadway and in London. His The Coast of Utopia even made Tony Awards history. It was a trilogy of plays about Russian revolutionaries set between 1833 and 1866; it included Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage. The plays made their premiere in a nine-hour long production at the National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn, and received three Olivier Award nominations. The trilogy fared better across the pond, earning 10 Tony nominations including Best Play; Coast of Utopia holds the record for the most Tony wins for a play, at seven.
During this time, Stoppard also served on the advisory board of the magazine Standpoint, playing a key role in its foundation, and even gave the opening speech at its launch. Additionally, Stoppard was a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that helps school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. Stoppard was appointed president of the London Library in 2002. His tenure lasted 15 years until Sir Tim Rice was elected president in 2017. Stoppard continued on as vice president.
In January 25, 2020, Stoppard's final play, Leopoldstadt, made its premiere at London's Wyndham's Theatre, earning the Olivier Award for Best New Play. The play is not only one of Stoppard's most acclaimed—which is not a simple rank to secure considering his long list of smash-hits—it also serves as arguably his most personal work, as it circles right back to the beginning of his life. Beginning in 1900 Vienna, it follows one Jewish family over the course of 50 years, culminating in most of the family being killed in the Holocaust, and only three surviving: Rosa, who fled to New York; Nathan, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp; and Leo, who has no memory of his life in Vienna or his Jewish identity. The youngest, Leo, was considered to be Stoppard's stage alter ego and as such, Leopoldstadt is considered his most biographical. The masterpiece of a play grapples with the generational trauma of the persecution of the Jewish community, the displacement of families, and the loss of cultural identity that occurs when communities need to assimilate in order to survive.
One scene towards the end of Leopoldstadt where Leo learns the truth about his family was taken directly from Stoppard's own life. In 1993, after decades of his mother not elaborating on her family history, Stoppard's cousin Sarka Gauglitz revealed that Stoppard's grandparents and his mother's sisters all died during the Holocaust. As Stoppard recounted to the New York Times: “There was this weird scene where I said to Sarka, ‘How Jewish are we?’ and then she said, ‘What? You’re Jewish.’ I said, ‘Yes, yes.’ I was embarrassed. So I’m kind of going, ‘Yes, I know I’m Jewish, but how?’ So she then drew this family tree.”
The West End transfer of Leopoldstadt was completely sold out, with every single seat filled at every single performance. The run ended prematurely due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, playing its final performance year on March 16, 2020. It reopened on August 7, 2021, finishing out its run and closing on October 30, 2021.
Leopoldstadt transferred to Broadway in 2022, opening to rave reviews on September 14, 2022. It won four 2023 Tony Awards, including Best Play. This win made Stoppard the most-winning playwright in Tony Award history. Leopoldstadt extended its run multiple times, finally closing on July 2, 2023. As Stoppard told the New York Times, about why
Stoppard was most recently produced in New York in late 2023, with Arcadia running Off-Broadway in a Bedlam Theater Company production. Initially a limited five-week engagement, it extended several times.
In an interview with Playbill in 2008, Stoppard detailed how he finds inspirations for his plays, saying: "When I feel it's time I write something else, I try to remember how it was that I got into the last one and where it came from...I think I probably rely on what I read. I'm not talking about great works of literature or great works of nonfiction. I'm a newsprint junkie, essentially. I often have a feeling that, though I'm not consciously looking for a play, I feel every time I open a newspaper or a magazine, I might find a play in it. And sometimes I think I have, but it turns out to be a false promise. And sometimes I get some things from somewhere else entirely. I can remember how The Coast of Utopia began. I remember reading an essay about one of the characters in the play and something in his story made me want to write." He then noted that people even approach him with ideas for plays, which isn't always helpful, noting: "The problem with that is, they're going on what you've already written. Whereas, for the writer, he's looking in areas where he hasn't written anything."
Stoppard is survived by his wife Sabrina Jane Guinness, his sons Oliver, Barnaby, Edmund, and Will, as well as several grandchildren.