Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Arcadia is a 1993 stage play written by English playwright Tom Stoppard, which explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty. It has been praised by many critics as the finest play from "one of the most significant contemporary playwrights" in the English language. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it one of the best science-related works ever written.
Felicity Ann Kendal is an English actress, working principally in television and theatre. She has appeared in numerous stage and screen roles over a more than 70-year career, including as Barbara Good in the television series The Good Life from 1975 to 1977. Kendal was born in Olton, England, but moved to India with her family from the age of seven. Her father was an English actor-manager who led his own repertory company on tours of India, and Kendal appeared in roles for the company both before and after leaving England. She appeared in the film Shakespeare Wallah (1965) which was inspired by her family.
Travesties is a 1974 play by Tom Stoppard. It centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an old man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time.
Toby Stephens is a British actor who has appeared in films in the United Kingdom, United States and India. He is known for the roles of Bond villain Gustav Graves in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day, for which he was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, William Gordon in the 2005 Mangal Pandey: The Rising film and Edward Fairfax Rochester in the 2006 BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre. From 2014 to 2017, he starred as Captain Flint in the Starz television series Black Sails, followed by one of the lead roles in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space from 2018 to 2021. He has starred as the Greek God Poseidon in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, actor, and screenwriter.
John Lamin Wood was an English actor, known for his performances in Shakespeare and his lasting association with Tom Stoppard. In 1976, he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Stoppard's Travesties. He was nominated for two other Tony Awards for his roles in Sherlock Holmes (1975) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968). In 2007, Wood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours List. Wood also appeared in WarGames, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Ladyhawke, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Orlando, Shadowlands, The Madness of King George, Richard III, Sabrina, and Chocolat.
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard that was first performed in 1982. The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress and member of a group fighting to free Brodie, a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest.
The Real Inspector Hound is a short, one-act play by Tom Stoppard. The plot follows two theatre critics named Moon and Birdboot who are watching a ludicrous setup of a country house murder mystery, in the style of a whodunit. By chance, they become involved in the action causing a series of events that parallel the play they are watching.
The Coast of Utopia is a 2002 trilogy of plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, written by Tom Stoppard with focus on the philosophical debates in pre-revolution Russia between 1833 and 1866. It was the recipient of the 2007 Tony Award for Best Play. The title comes from a chapter in Avrahm Yarmolinsky's book Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism (1959).
Treats is a 1975 romantic drama play by Christopher Hampton about a love triangle.
Jumpers is a play by Tom Stoppard which was first performed in 1972. It explores and satirises the field of academic philosophy by likening it to a less-than-skilful competitive gymnastics display. Jumpers raises questions such as "What do we know?" and "Where do values come from?" It is set in an alternative reality in which some British astronauts have landed on the Moon and "Radical Liberals" have taken over the British government. It was inspired by the notion that a crewed Moon landing would ruin the Moon as a poetic trope and possibly lead to a collapse of moral values. It has been said that Jumpers is "a play often dismissed as too clever by half", but a number of other writers have listed it among Stoppard's highest achievements.
Professional Foul is a television play written by Czech-born, British playwright Tom Stoppard. It was broadcast on 21 September 1977 in BBC 2's Play of the Week series.
Edmund Stoppard is an English actor. He is the son of playwright Tom Stoppard and doctor Miriam, Lady Hogg. his credits include The Pianist (2002), Joy Division (2006), Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2006), Tchaikovsky (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008), Britain's Greatest Codebreaker (2011), The Politician's Husband (2013), Cilla (2014), Blackwood (2014), Angelica (2015), Home Fires (2015), The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015–2017), Genius (2017), Knightfall (2017–2019), Brave New World (2020), The Princess (2022), and Golda (2023).
After Magritte is a surreal comedy written by Tom Stoppard in 1970. It was first performed in the Green Banana Restaurant at the Ambiance Lunch-hour Theatre Club in London.
A Small Family Business is a play by Alan Ayckbourn about the eponymous business and dealing with the Thatcherism of the time. It premiered at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre on 20 May 1987, where it won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for that year. Its Broadway premiere occurred on 27 April 1992.
Fiona Button is an English actress. She is best known for playing Rose Defoe in The Split.
The Hard Problem is a play by British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, first produced in 2015. The title refers to the hard problem of consciousness, which Stoppard defines as having "subjective First Person experiences"; he notes the strangeness in the illusion of consciousness in which, clearly, you have to be conscious to experience.
Leopoldstadt is a dramatic stage play written by British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard. The original production premiered on 25 January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End. The play is set among the wealthy Jewish community in Vienna, in the first half of the 20th century and follows the lives of "a prosperous Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East".
A Lesson from Aloes is a 1978 play by South African playwright Athol Fugard. It is the story of Piet Bezuidenhout, a red-faced, big-hearted Afrikaner, who is suspected of being an informer; Gladys, his fragile embittered wife, whose tenuous hold on sanity has been broken by a routine police raid during which her diaries were ransacked; and Steve Daniels, a Colored activist just out of jail and about to leave South Africa for England on an Exit visa.
