The musical Tom Stoppard wrote
RIPThe arts world is reflecting tonight on the playwright Tom Stoppard, who has died at the age of 88.
Czech born, Stoppard was a virtuosic interpreter of English language subtleties and in-jokes. High-mined in an often trivial art, he could write about half-forgotten philosophers and sell out a run in the West End.
What tomorrow’s obits may forget to mention is the musical he wrote in 1977 with the conductor-composer Andre Previn, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. A caustic attack on the Kremlin’s practice of confining dissidents to mental asylums, it involved a full symphony orchestra playing a lively part in the action. It is worth noting the the Putin regime has continued the practice of treating dissenters as lunatics.
Time for a revival of EGBDF.
It is sad that this Stoppard / Previn work cannot be heard as a relic of the past. I’ve had that LP for 45 years, and it was brought out and put on the turntable more than once in recent months.
Any playwright that has an actor play the tuba (After Magritte) is fine by me.
I attended a performance of EGBDF at Heinz Hall on September 10th, 1978 (I saved the program booklet), and it was one of the best concerts I had ever attended … a real success! But later, after I had bought the original cast album, I found that I liked the music far better than I liked the play that it was centered around …I personally think that EGBDF contains some of Previn’s most colorful and original music – someone should arrange an orchestral suite or a fantasia or a symphony from the score …
In 1978, the play was produced for television by the BBC. Maybe it’s still in the archive.
I heard it at the Kennedy Center by Previn/Pittsburgh on tour, probably fall 1978, splendid piece. Didn’t somebody come up with a reduced orchestra version, although the fantasy of an imaginary full symphony orchestra playing Previn’s excellent score was quite something.
Only Stoppard could have written a protagonist called Dick Wagner – the hard-drinking cynical journalist in “Night and Day”, set in a war-torn banana republic – who, when cowering from offstage gunfire, is told by the heroine Ruth (first played by Diana Rigg, then Maggie Smith) “Wagner, compose yourself”.
I used to show the play on vhs in my English lessons: Ben Kingsley was superb. The music partly a pastiche of DSCH’s. My pupil Patrick Marber directed it years later and then wrote a parallel work, I think.
I played a tour of EGBDF with Oxford Pro Musica I think in the 70’s. Led by Tim Good playing his Luff violin, and 3 Luff violas out of 4! We played in Bath Brighton and I am not sure where else. I learned about the smell of acetone during hunger strikes.. and much else.
Such a brilliant playwright.