With a thirty-year run of award-winning, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful plays, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) to The Invention of Love (1997), Tom Stoppard is arguably the pre-eminent playwright in Britain today. His popularity also extends to the United States, where his plays have won three Tony awards and his screenplay for Shakespeare in Love won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. John Fleming offers the first book-length assessment of Stoppard's work in nearly a decade. He takes an in-depth look at the three newest plays (Arcadia, Indian Ink, and The Invention of Love) and the recently revised versions of Travesties and Hapgood, as well as at four other major plays (Rosencrantz, Jumpers, Night and Day, and The Real Thing). Drawing on Stoppard's personal papers at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC), Fleming also examines Stoppard's previously unknown play Galileo, as well as numerous unpublished scripts and variant texts of his published plays. Fleming also mines Stoppard's papers for a fuller, more detailed overview of the evolution of his plays. By considering Stoppard's personal views (from both his correspondence and interviews) and by examining his career from his earliest scripts and productions through his most recent, this book provides all that is essential for understanding and appreciating one of the most complex and distinctive playwrights of our time. John Fleming is Director of Graduate Studies in the Theatre Department at Southwest Texas State University.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
This volume is, as advertised, the first book-length appreciation of Tom Stoppard's work "in nearly a decade." Fleming, director of graduate studies at Southwest Texas State University's theater arts department, had access to Stoppard's papers on deposit at the University of Texas, which allowed him access to unpublished correspondence and unproduced scripts, as well as many variant readings of texts. The result is a thoughtful and well-considered appreciation of Stoppard's theatrical work. It is not an easy book to read; Fleming moves cautiously and with great deliberation through the major plays and also offers a chapter on the unpublished "Galileo" and asides on various radio and television scripts. But then, neither is Stoppard an easy playwright to appreciate. He brings to his writing material that would seem to defy dramatization, from the imagined travels and travails of two unlucky minor Shakespearean characters to a staged explanation of chaos theory. Yet Stoppard's language in the mouths of actors can reach a wide audience, and Fleming's book details how that is possible. It will be of value to directors as well as to theater instructors and playwriting classes. Recommended for undergraduate and graduate libraries. Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhead
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The fullest and most complete analysis of Stoppard's works from their first presentations to later revivals, this book is a must for anyone contemplating a production of any of Stoppard's plays. Strongly recommended for college and university libraries and for theater professionals." Choice "... a thoughtful and well-considered appreciation of Stoppard's theatrical work... It will be of value to directors as well as to theater instructors and playwriting classes." Library Journal "... a clear, readable and eminently useful account of Stoppard's work for the stage." American Theatre
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