Alastair Macaulay: An intimate moment with Tom Stoppard
Alastair Macaulayby Alastair Macaulay:
Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) has died. After the world premiere of his “The Invention of Love” in 1997, I wrote to him (we had never met) to say that it was plays such as this that made me love my work as a theatre critic (I was then the main theatre critic of the “Financial Times”). In his reply, he said both that he and the play’s director. Richard Eyre, had agreed that mine had been the most acute review; he also remarked “I don’t even know what you look like.” I, rushing off to a holiday, quickly replied on a postcard “I look like a dance critic.” Three weeks later, back from holiday, I returned to see “The Invention of Love” again. Afterwards, my companion drew my attention to Stoppard’s presence outside the theatre. I duly plucked up courage, went up, and introduced myself to the playwright. Stoppard, shaking my hand, immediately said “You don’t look like a dance critic at all.”
The following year, I met him at a party in London. I had had a long day, and was still wearing the crimson shirt and other clothes I had put on in Manchester that morning. Greeting me, he said “It’s too bad you don’t have a lover to iron your shirts, Alastair – but it’s a beautiful colour.” I have been laughing ever since (and have often thought of telling a lover “You’re not coming to bed with me till you’ve ironed all my shirts”.) In due course I reviewed the world premieres of “The Coasts of Utopia” (trilogy, 2002) and “Rock ‘n’ Roll” (2006), he wrote to thank me for my review of the former – and, when I left London to work in New York in 2007, he wrote to assure me “You will be missed.”
Although he was usually self-deprecating and funny, he paid me the compliment of occasionally talking or writing to me at length about his work, as well as inviting me to his astounding biennial garden parties in the Chelsea Physic Gardens – the guest list ranged from Princess Margaret, Mick Jagger, Clive James, and Martin Amis. I mourn him as a great playwright and as a friend.
I saw R&G are Dead on stage as a student. Somehow it felt from then on as if Tom Stoppard was the playwright of our generation, though he was a good deal older. But through the years he always seemed youthful in outlook and his name was the imprimatur of quality on anything you might deal with on TV, radio or at the movies as well as on stage and page.
It is sad to know there will be no more new Stoppard plays. But some will last forever. RIP.
The last of the playwrights that mattered (instead of writing just an occasional decent play).
With Michael Frayn, Alan Bennett and David Hare all still alive, I think you’re talking nonsense; and that’s solely within the confines of English dramatists.
I hope Norman asks you to pen a longer article.
Agreed
Saw many Stoppard plays and more recently loved Leopoldstadt.
The Invention of Love, however, saw it at the Hampstead Theatre recently with Simon Russell Beale. It’s a play for inchellektewells with brains far bigger than mine. I got a serious case of cramp.