Culture Icons... R.I.P

[TheVat]

Tom Stoppard - 88 years the wit.

Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies at 88

Winning an Oscar for the screenplay for Shakespeare In Love, he captivated the hearts of audiences for more than six decades.

www.bbc.co.uk

Recently discussed (briefly) in the movie-quote thread.

Alexandra Petri's love note to Tom Stoppard. I concur.

Tom Stoppard Achieved the Impossible

His plays hold us in the moment outside of time.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[exchemist]

Alexandra Petri's love note to Tom Stoppard. I concur.

Tom Stoppard Achieved the Impossible

His plays hold us in the moment outside of time.

www.theatlantic.com

I loved his polymath plays. I thought "Arcadia" was brilliant - and refreshing to see science brought to the stage so intelligently. Also "The Real Thing" and "The Invention of Love". But Stoppard was going for donkey's years. I remember attending a production of "The Real Inspector Hound" at my brother's school, in the early 70s, in which said brother played Hound, making great play of enunciating "swamp boots" very slowly and clearly, in a London mock-police voice, to general hilarity.

 

[TheVat]

Wonderful! That's one I haven't seen on stage, would love to. I have an mp3 of a London production, downloaded from the Internet Archive. And your brother's opportunity to enunciate swamp boots is another reminder that an American high school generally doesn't offer what a British secondary school does. My wife lived in England for one year (Coopersale Common, NE of London, near Epping) around age 10, attending 5th grade (sixth year, I think you call it, of primary school). She found herself somewhat ahead of the curriculum when she then attended an American 6th grade next year.

 

[exchemist]

Wonderful! That's one I haven't seen on stage, would love to. I have an mp3 of a London production, downloaded from the Internet Archive. And your brother's opportunity to enunciate swamp boots is another reminder that an American high school generally doesn't offer what a British secondary school does. My wife lived in England for one year (Coopersale Common, NE of London, near Epping) around age 10, attending 5th grade (sixth year, I think you call it, of primary school). She found herself somewhat ahead of the curriculum when she then attended an American 6th grade next year.

OK I admit it wasn’t a regular state secondary school, but St. Paul’s, an excellent independent London day school, to which he had managed to get a sort of scholarship that my father had found out about and applied for.

Stoppard was always fun to see.