CDA: Tom Stoppard

My brother Howard alerted me to the death of English playwright Tom Stoppard, age 88. The play that established his reputation was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a dazzling riff on Shakespeare first staged in 1966. Here’s a scene from the 1990 film, directed by Stoppard:

He won the Tony Award for Best Play for R and G and won it another four times, more than any other playwright.

He had a side hustle writing screenplays. I first encountered his work in Brazil:

That clip doesn’t really show off his writing but it’s my favorite scene in the movie…

He won the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love:

Stoppard knew that his family was from Czechoslovakia but was in his fifties when he learned that all four of his grandparents were Jewish and were killed in Nazi concentration camps, along with three of his mother’s sisters. This was the basis of his last Best Play Tony, Leopoldstadt.