Bøker av Tom Stoppard

In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sits Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the '500 acres inclusive of lake' where Capability Brown's idealized landscape is about to give way to the 'picturesque' Gothic style: 'everything but vampires', as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later.Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park.Tom Stoppard's absorbing play takes us back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life - 'the attraction', as Hannah says, 'which Newton left out'.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play which, as it were, takes place in the wings of Hamlet, and finds both humour and poignancy in the situation of the ill-fated attendant lords. The National Theatre production in April 1967 made Tom Stoppard's reputation virtually overnight. Its wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were then and the play has become a contemporary classic.'One of the most original and engaging of post-war plays.' Daily Telegraph

This fifth collection of Tom Stoppard's plays brings together five classic plays by one of the most celebrated dramatists writing in the English language.The collection includes The Real Thing, Night & Day, Hapgood, Indian Ink and Arcadia, about which the reviewer for the Daily Telegraph said 'I have never left a new play more convinced that I'd just witnessed a masterpiece'.

Tom Stoppard's provocative new play spans the recent history of Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution - but from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock 'n' roll band came to symbolise resistance to the regime, and the British left, represented by a Communist philosopher at Cambridge.Rock 'n' Roll premieres at The Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006 and is part of the 50th anniversary programme.

Tom Stoppard's take on the story of Penelope, in her own voice, published in pamphlet form with an introduction by the author.Let others sing of war and a hero buffeted by fate. I sing of marriage and a marriage bed, and the endurance of love.In this radiant prose-poem, Odysseus's wife tells of the long years awaiting her husband's return, and of his dramatic arrival back on the island of Ithaca.Weaving together the lush imagery of Homeric epic with a wryly modern wit and sensibility, Penelope's voice emerges in a wise and resonant retelling of an ancient, still vital love story.

Harris, his mother and his wife are a kooky trio. Enter the forceful inspector from Scotland Yard with his constable - which is strange, notes the wife, for she had ordered an ambulance. The officers proceed to place the three under arrest. It is not clear why; something about a parked car, a bunch of .22 caliber shells in the waste basket, and a robbery of the box office of a minstrel show. But Harris has an explanation: he had parked near an art gallery to let his mother see some paintings by Magritte in which her obsessional instrument, the tuba, figured grandly. But then it develops that there was no minstrel show at all, and the plot goes haywire. Performed in New York with The Real Inspector Hound.

"Penniless and indebted to two demanding producers, struggling young playwright William Shakespeare is tormented by writer's block, until he meets the beautiful Viola de Lesseps, daughter of a wealthy merchant, whose fiery passion for poetry and drama leaves her secretly longing to be an actor. Viola quickly become the playwright's muse, while she disguises herself as a man to become a player. Both are despondent when they learn that Viola's father has promised her to the stuffy Lord Wessex in order to gain a title for their family. Under veil of secrecy, Will and Viola's passionate love affair becomes the basis of the very play he is writing - Romeo and Juliet. With opening night - and the wedding day - fast approaching, the plots race toward a parallel conclusion. Will it work out in the end or are the two star-crossed lovers destined for tragedy?"--Publisher's description

Consequently, hundreds of thousands had fled from the Pale of Settlement and the pogroms in the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt. Tom Stoppard's new play is a passionate drama of love and endurance, an intimate play with an epic sweep, the story of a family who made good.

Above all don't use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science.Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness?This is 'the hard problem' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry.Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask?Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard premieres at the National Theatre, London, in January 2015.

Following his success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the author continues his association with Hamlet by taking the most well-known and best-loved lines from Shakespeare's play and condensing them into a hilarious version of the play lasting approximately thirteen minutes. The miraculous feat is followed by an encore which consists of a two-minute version of the play! The vast multitude of characters is played by six actors with hectic doubling, and the action takes place at a shortened version of Elsinore Castle.

The classicism of Lady Croom's grounds are being turned into a romantic chaos. In a room overlooking the work, her daughter and tutor are disturbed by, among others, Lady Croom and Ezra Chater. In the same room, 180 years later, a group try unsuccessfully to unravel the events of 1809.

Arriving at the library to continue work on his dictionary, Johnson is horrified to discover that the place has been ransacked. Originally produced for television, this one act play combines wit, wordplay and a touch of comic absurdity.1 woman, 4 men

A tie-in edition to the upcoming Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard's extraordinary play about love and marriage--the work that has been called "the most moving play" ("The New York Times") he has ever written.

Frank recognizes the voice of the GPO speaking clock as that of his long-lost wife. Determined to get her back, he forces his way into the inner sanctum of the Authorities to demand her release. Underlying the light-hearted story is a satiric comment on man's servitude to the clock.5 women, 7 men

A sly, gentle dig at society''s conventions and preconceptions. John Brown arrives at a country nursing home with a case of money expecting hotel-style service. He''s a kind of dropout bound to puzzle a profession geared to treating the sick. He''s not physically ill and apparently not mentally so. He settles into the routine and cocoon-like security. Everyone speculates as to his identity.|4 women, 2 men

Flora Crewe, an unconventional, young English poet living in India in 1930, is having her portrait painted by local artist Nairad Das and writing letters home to her sister Nell. Intermittent scenes, which are set in England in 1980, focus on Nell as she sorts through the cherished letters to aid Flora's would be biographer, Eldon Pike. Within this context, Indian Ink weaves a captivating, whimsical love story that underscores aspects of relationships between cultures and between the sexes that are indelible.-4 women, 14 men

Dirty Linen concerns the investigation of a Select Committee into the moral standards of the House of Commons - a somewhat unconventional investigation, rendered not less so by the presence of an ultra-sexy secretary whose clothes have a trick of whisking off in the hands of various members. New-Found-Land is a duologue between two Home Office officials, with a tour-de-force speech on America by one of them.2 women, 8 men

I can't remember which side I'm supposed to be working for, and it is not in fact necessary for me to know.The Cold War is approaching its endgame and somebody in spymaster Elizabeth Hapgood's network is leaking secrets. Is her star double agent really a triple? The trap she sets becomes a hall of mirrors in which betrayal is personal and treachery a trick of the light.Tom Stoppard's Hapgood premiered at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in March 1988. It was revived at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in December 2015.

The provocative and funny look at exploitation and corruption, journalistic ethics, freedom of the press and marital infidelity is set in a fictional copper rich African nation. Dick Wagner of The Sunday Globe and a competing freelance journalist arrive at the jungle home of a white mine owner. Soon they are competing for the use of their host's telex, the attentions of his wife and a possible interview with the missing president of Kambawe.1 woman, 7 men

'Travesties is a superb comedy, a work of thought and imagination.' Stage and Television'It is a champagne cocktail, compounded of a balletic nimbleness of invention, a bewildering intricacy of design which reaches the sublime heights where mathematics merge with poetry, and the audacious juggling of ideas of a master conjuror.' Sunday Telegraph'A dazzling pyrotechnical feat that combines Wildean pastiche, political history, artistic debate, spoof reminiscence, and song-and-dance in marvellously judicious proportions. The text itself is a Joycean web of literary allusions; yet it also radiates sheer intellectual joie de vivre, as if Stoppard were delightedly communicating the fruits of his own researches.' Guardian

Flora Crewe, a young poet travelling India in 1930, has her portrait painted by a local artist. More than fifty years later, the artist's son visits Flora's sister in London while her would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India.The alternation of place and period in Tom Stoppard's play (based on his radio play In the Native State) makes for a rich and moving exploration of intimate lives set against one of the great shifts of history, the emergence of the Indian sub-continent from the grip of Empire.Indian Ink was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in February 1995.

This second collection of work by Tom Stoppard contains his radio plays, which complement (and sometimes prefigure) his work for the stage. The volume includes In the Native State, which became the stage play Indian Ink.Also in this volume are The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, 'M' is for Moon Among Other Things, If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, Albert's Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died and an introduction by the author. This new edition contains the previously unpublished radio play, On 'Dover Beach'.

Albert has a degree in philosophy and with a job as bridge painter has a new perspective on life up high. Through CPSs and programmed efficiency, he replaces four painters and the bridge is all his. He also has to get married - but that's another story. He's bothered by a reluctant suicide and by 1400 additional painters causing the bridge and Albert's dream to collapse.-2 women, 10 men

The Incredible Radical Liberal Jumpers are a team of acrobatic professors of philosophy, whose absurd gymnastic displays reflect a bewildering world where logic has confounded belief in moral absolutes. In this dark, exuberant comedy, Stoppard brilliantly parodies the philosophy lecture, the detective thriller, the comedy of manners and the Whitehall farce, to follow a philosopher's doomed flight to prove the existence of God in the face of an indifferent universe.This is the definitive text of Tom Stoppard's celebrated comedy.'A dazzling, hilarious and honestly benevolent work, which creates a dramatic structure from a forbidding diversity of materials.' The Times

The Coast of Utopia is an epic but also intimate drama of romantics and revolutionaries in an age of emperors. The three sequential, self-contained plays, Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage, span the lives and loves of a group of Russian friends at home and abroad in the tumultuous years between 1833 and 1866. This new fully revised edition of the trilogy contains an introduction by the author.

This third collection of plays by Tom Stoppard contains his television plays, written between 1965 and 1984. They show that Stoppard's writing for the small screen is comparable to his more celebrated stage work, as the masterly Professional Foul demonstrates. In his introduction the author briefly describes how the individual pieces came to be written and the circumstances of their original production.

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories, however, are dramatically if confusedly alive. The river which flows through Tom Stoppard's play connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's early manhood where High Victorianism in art, literature and morality is being challenged by the Aesthetic movement and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst on to the London scene...The Invention of Love premiered at the National Theatre, London, in September 1997.

Every Good Boy Deserves FavourA dissident is locked up in an asylum. If he accepts that he was ill and has been cured, he will be released. He refuses. Sharing his cell is a real lunatic who believes himself to be surrounded by an orchestra. As the dissident's son begs his father to free himself with a lie, Tom Stoppard's darkly funny and provocative play asks if denying the truth is a price worth paying for liberty.'Plays which enhance civilization itself, which is what this does, are not seen once and laid away.' Bernard Levin, Sunday TimesEvery Good Boy premiered at the Festival Hall, London, in July 1977. It was revived at the National Theatre, London, in January 2009.Professional Foul'Professor Anderson, a somewhat devious academic, went to Prague to deliver a lecture on "e;Ethical Facts in Ethical Fiction"e; and to see a football match. Politics intruded when a former pupil of Anderson begged him to smuggle out a thesis arguing that "e;the ethics of the State can only be the ethics of the individual writ large."e; . . . Mr Stoppard's BBC television debut was sheer delight.' Richard Last, Daily Telegraph