Tom Stoppard, frequently hailed as the greatest British playwright of this generation, had both a remarkable life and a remarkable career.
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, his family fled to Singapore when the Nazis invaded. When Japan threatened their new home, his mother took him and his brother to India. His father stayed behind in Singapore but died when the ship he was aboard was sunk. His mother later married a British officer and the family relocated to England, where young Stoppard took his stepfather’s surname and “put on Englishness like a coat,” he later said.
Stoppard quickly became known for his clever, witty and intellectually curious work, earning three Olivier Awards, five Tony Awards and an Oscar (for “Shakespeare in Love”). He was even knighted in 1997 by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to theater.
Starting with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in 1966, through his final full-length play “Leopoldstadt” in 2020, Stoppard crafted a body of work that would be the envy of most countries, let alone one writer.
Below are some of Stoppard most important plays, with observations from Times critics:
The 2022 Broadway production of “Leopoldstadt” in a family scene from 1924.
(Joan Marcus)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
After working as a journalist, Stoppard had a breakthrough when this absurdist romp debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe. Times theater critic Charles McNulty reviewed a 2013 production at the Old Globe’s Shakespeare Festival in San Diego, describing it as a “metapharcical romp (to coin a genre), in which ‘Hamlet’ is glimpsed through the oblique perspective of the prince’s twin buddies, sent to spy on him by Gertrude and Claudius in that Elsinore castle of murder, adultery and occult intrigue. … Stoppard’s fertile wit keeps this three-act drama pulsing along without too much strain. A subtle pathos, along with the playwright’s verbal sophistication, prevents the play from degenerating into a collegiate vaudeville.” In 1990, Stoppard himself directed a film version starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth.
Jumpers (1972)
This satire set in an alternative universe in which British astronauts land on the moon and “Radical Liberals” have taken over the nation’s government, premiered at London’s Old Vic starring Michael Hordern and Diana Rigg. Two years later, Times theater critic Dan Sullivan reviewed an American Conservatory Theater production of it in San Francisco. “Stoppard’s new play can’t be hung with one of those preprinted tags that theater critics carry in their pockets for easy labeling,” he wrote. “You might call it a Metaphysical Spoof With Acrobatic Prelude, or you might not. The only general thing you can say about it is that it’s very bright and very funny, and sometimes rather touching.”
Travesties (1974)
The Royal Shakespeare Company staged the first production at the Aldwych Theatre in London, starring John Wood, John Hurt, Tom Bell and Frank Windsor. Stoppard was fascinated with the idea that James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Dadadist poet Tristan Tzara were all living in Zurich in 1917. He placed these zeitgeist figures in the orbit of a more humble historical figure named Henry Carr, who figured into Joyce’s “Ulysses.” The Times’ Sullivan took in the 1975 New York production, calling it “dazzling” and wondered if Broadway audiences would be able to keep up with it. “Like Stoppard’s last play ‘Jumpers’ (which didn’t do very well here), this is a vaudeville show where the language does tricks as well as the actors,” wrote Sullivan. “And to do the tricks as well as ‘Travesties,’ John Wood [as Carr], a playwright’s language has got to be pretty accomplished.”
The Real Thing (1982)
Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees originated the lead roles in Stoppard’s very personal examination of love and marriage, truth and honesty. The playwright significantly reworked the script for its Broadway run, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons directed by Mike Nichols, to great success. Linda Purl and Michael Gross assumed the roles for the 1986 L.A. production at the Doolittle Theatre. ”Without spoiling its surprises, the reviewer can say that not every scene in ‘The Real Thing’ is what it seems to be, including the first one,” wrote Sullivan. “Stoppard’s characters are theater people, professional makers of scenes, and some of these scenes get swept into the play. … ‘The Real Thing’ has wit, surprise and characters you care about. … If you like plays written in full sentences, you’ll like ‘The Real Thing.’
Arcadia (1993)
Moving between the 19th century and the present, Stoddard balanced tragedy and comedy with a healthy dose of science and mathematics. The play opened at the Royal National Theatre in London directed by Trevor Nunn with a cast including Rufus Sewell, Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy and Emma Fielding. Two years later, in New York, Nunn directed a new cast that included Billy Crudup, Blair Brown, Victor Garber as Bernard, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Dundas and Paul Giamatti in his Broadway debut. “‘Arcadia’ is a great play not because it seamlessly meshes serious ideas and the intense pleasure of a literary detective story,” wrote Times critic Laurie Winer, reviewing director Robert Egan’s 1997 Mark Taper Forum production. “It is a great play because, by the end, Tom Stoppard touches ineffability, just as his heroine touches genius.”
The Invention of Love (1997)
For this portrait of poet A. E. Housman, Stoppard once again turned to historical figures for his cast. The play premiered at the Royal National Theatre, London, with Housman played as an old man by John Wood and as a young man by Paul Rhys. It was directed by Richard Eyre. The play opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre in 2001, directed by Jack O’Brien. “Stoppard has written an essentially undramatic dreamscape,” wrote Times critic Michael Phillips.” The recently deceased Housman (Richard Easton), about to cross the River Styx, assesses his recessive life and great unrequited love for the athlete Moses Jackson (David Harbour), a fellow Oxford man. En route, the elder Housman runs into his younger self (Robert Sean Leonard). There’s a long scene near the end of Act 1 shared by the two Housmans. As they discuss the niceties and textual flaws of the classics they love as much as life itself, Stoppard’s playfulness is tinged with rue; the older man cannot prevent the younger’s heartbreak to come.”
The Coast of Utopia (2002)
This trilogy of plays, “Voyage,” “Shipwreck” and “Salvage,” zeroed in on philosophical debates in 19th century Russia. They premiered at the National Theatre’s Olivier auditorium in repertory, directed by Nunn. The plays debuted on Broadway, directed by Jack O’Brien, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in 2006. “A nearly eight-hour drama about the Russian intelligentsia that received mixed reviews when it premiered in London in 2002, ‘The Coast of Utopia’ isn’t for the theatrical faint of heart,” cautioned Times critic McNulty. “Stamina is a prerequisite for the company and audience alike. … Stoppard’s play enacts a moment in history when thinkers and writers set out to redirect the future. Ideologies were conceived and pressed immediately into service, sometimes at the expense of the individual lives they were theoretically meant to serve. [It] dramatizes both the ebb and flow of conditional life and the hunger for unconditional solutions to its woes.”
Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006)
Stoppard looked to his Czech roots with this drama, connecting the Prague Spring of 1968 with the Velvet Revolution of 1989 through music. The play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, once again directed by Nunn and featuring Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox and Sinéad Cusack. The cast moved to Broadway in 2007. “You might want to arrive a bit early and study the timelines in the lobby, which detail Czechoslovakia’s turbulent political history from 1968 to 1990 and key events in the rock music scene during that era,” wrote reviewer F. Kathleen Foley of Open Fist’s 2010 production. “Read them carefully. Otherwise your head just may explode at some point during this Los Angeles premiere, which presupposes an intimate familiarity with Czech history, the early rock scene and, oh, did we mention Sapphic poetry? It’s all a bit ostentatious and difficult to follow — but even at his most intellectually prolix, Stoppard is flat-out brilliant, arguably our greatest living playwright.”
Leopoldstadt (2020)
The final play of Stoppard’s brilliant career was sparked by the playwright learning of the plight of his Jewish ancestors upon his mother’s death in 1996. It debuted at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End, but was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and debuted on Broadway in 2022 starring Davis Krumholtz with Patrick Marber directing. The play “unfolds as a series of oil paintings magicked into life,” wrote Times critic McNulty. “The play, which features a cast of 38 actors, moves from turn-of-the-century Vienna, where Freud, Mahler and Schnitzler are the talk of the town, to 1924, when the scars of World War I are clearly visible. Performed without intermission, the action ominously leaps to 1938, as the Nazis are ransacking the homes of Jewish citizens. The play concludes in 1955, when three family survivors reunite to piece together the fates of their murdered relatives. … It’s not just that the work mirrors aspects of his personal history. It’s also the virtuosic way that he conjures the shifting cultural zeitgeist of Vienna in the first half of the 20th century through stylized conversation alone.”
You can find audio dramas by L.A. Theatre Works of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” “The Real Thing” and “Arcadia” on Spotify.
Many of the films Stoppard wrote or co-wrote are available for streaming, including “Brazil” (1985),” Turner Classic Movies, and for rent on Apple TV and Prime Video; “The Russia House” (1990), for rent on Prime Video; “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1990), for rent on various platforms; “Empire of the Sun” (1987), for rent on various platforms; and “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), Paramount+ and Kanopy, and for rent on various platforms.
Stoppard is also certainly a playwright whose work is a joy to read. Most of these plays can be found at your local public library or favorite bookstore.
Stranger Things season five has introduced new character Derek Turnbow and he is already proving to be a fan favourite
*WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Stranger Things season 5, Volume 1.*
Netflix viewers have finally returned to Hawkins after a gruelling three-year wait, and there’s a host of new characters joining the group.
Stranger Things season five has now released its first four episodes, which follow the original gang as they attempt to find the season four villain, Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower).
While Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is training for the moment she comes face to face with the monster, the nerds and teens take on their own plans to support the mission.
Viewers then meet potty-mouth newcomer Derek Turnbow, who is seen bullying Holly Wheeler by forcing the playground carousel to speed up while she is lying on it.
It later emerges that Vecna is targeting Derek, so the group plans to kidnap him in order to save his life and track down Vecna’s hiding spot.
Their plan falls apart, but Derek is soon enlisted to go undercover as ‘Delightful Derek’ in an attempt to rescue the mission.
Many Stranger Things fans have been raving about the new character, taking to social media to praise the actor behind the emerging favourite.
Who plays Derek Turnbow in Stranger Things?
Jake Connelly is an American actor whose breakout role came in Stranger Things 5.
Before joining the Netflix show, Connelly’s only IMDb credit was in a short film called Between the Silence.
Connelly is only 13 years old and was around four when the show premiered. But he managed to catch up on the sci-fi hit a few years ago.
Speaking to The Wrap at the season five premiere, he revealed: “I started watching it a good couple of years ago, probably around when Season 4 came out.”
“As a family, we sat down every night and watched an episode before bed. It was just so fun seeing everything that my mom grew up with in the ’80s,” Connelly added.
Despite being a newcomer, Connelly was welcomed with open arms. In the same interview, he told The Wrap that the main star, Brown, was especially kind.
He recalled: “I gotta say, one of the first days of the table read, Millie Bobby Brown called me over to her [trailer] and — my mom had no idea where I went — I was just there with Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi just chilling it up, just talking.
“And she said, ‘Oh yeah, we were all your age when we started. If you ever need anything, you can just call us.'”
Stranger Things 5 episodes 1-4 are streaming now on Netflix
Stranger Things season 5 introduced a brand-new cast member in the form of Mike Wheeler’s little sister
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WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Stranger Things season 5, Volume 1
Stranger Things season five, volume one has now arrived on Netflix after a final trailer and features some huge twists and turns with Hawkins now under military lockdown following the events of the series four finale.
The gang and Eleven (played by Millie Bobby Brown) continued to try and find Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) as he hid in the Upside Down, with things heating up in the final season of Stranger Things.
While Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and his friends were busy searching for the villainous creature, he failed to notice his sister Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) was seemingly having visions and speaking to someone.
Instead of questioning whether she, too, had special abilities like Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), both Mike and his family put it all down to an imaginary friend rather than considering it could be Vecna.
Unsurprisingly, this resulted in Holly getting kidnapped by a demogorgon and taken to the Upside Down.
Many Stranger Things fans are now curious to know more about the actress behind the new Holly, after the younger version of the character was played by identical twins Anniston and Tinsley Price in previous seasons.
Who plays Holly Wheeler in Stranger Things season 5?
British child star Nell Fisher plays the new Holly in Stranger Things season five.
Hailing from London, the 13-year-old has previously starred in Bookworm, Evil Dead Rise, Northspur, TV show My Life Is Murder and Choose Love.
According to IMDb, she is rumoured to next be starring in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Live Action TV series, which is in pre-production.
Watch Stranger Things on Netflix for free with Sky
Sky is giving away a free Netflix subscription with its new Sky Stream TV bundles, including the £15 Essential TV plan.
This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like Stranger Things.
How old is Holly Wheeler in Stranger Things season 5?
Actress Fisher is 13-years-old, but her character Holly was born in 1980, according to the Stranger Things fandom page, and so would be around seven-years-old in season five.
Holly would have been around three-years-old in season one, which is set in 1983.
At one point, Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) remarks how Holly “isn’t five anymore” alluding to her daughter getting older.
Why was Holly Wheeler recast in Stranger Things?
The reason for the recasting was because the producers wanted an older and more experienced actress to take on the role of Holly, who has a big role to play in season five.
As revealed in season five, volume one, Holly’s part in the story is pretty important, with Matt Duffer telling SFX in a recent interview: “Once you see the full season, you’ll have a better understanding of why it was so important to add her to the cast.
“One of the reasons was, we just wanted to recapture some of the feeling of season one, and some of that you can’t recapture unless you have kids, because our kids are not kids anymore. They’re not close to being kids anymore.”
Adding: “So it was really fun to add Holly and her classmates into the show, because it allowed us to recapture some of that feeling.”
Stranger Things season 5, volume 2 is released on Netflix UK and Ireland on Boxing Day (December 26) at 1am
New York Giants quarterback Jameis Winston’s candidate for play of the year and a spectacular catch from Dallas Cowboys receiver George Pickens top the best of the plays from week 12 of the NFL season.
Life has a way of taking things from us that we think we can’t do without. Often that means the death of a loved one, but sometimes it can be home — and with it, our grounding in the world. When we meet Dusty, the laconic protagonist of “Rebuilding,” he has already lost so much. His marriage is over. His parents have been dead and buried for quite a while. But as this modest drama begins, Dusty is grappling with the most crushing of blows: His cherished 200-acre family ranch in Colorado has burned down in a devastating wildfire. He survived but he might as well be a ghost.
Dusty is played by Josh O’Connor, who lately has cornered the market on sensitive, passive outsiders. With his wiry frame and shy eyes, the British actor has demonstrated in films such as “La Chimera” and “The Mastermind” an appetite for soft-spoken characters who exude a gentle masculinity. We don’t know if Dusty’s voice is noticeably hushed because of his recent tragedy, but as he tries to pick up the pieces, this lonesome cowboy drifts through his days, doing his best to pretend he’s holding up OK.
Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s second feature shares with his first a sympathy for strong, silent types. His flinty 2022 debut “A Love Song” was drenched in melancholy, casting Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as aging childhood friends reunited, a tentative romance faintly sparking. Similarly, “Rebuilding” is a tale of grief and what-ifs populated by everyday folks who speak in terse tones. The movie radiates the spare, rugged poetry of a short story or a John Prine song. (Fittingly, the musician appears on the soundtrack.)
O’Connor keeps Dusty’s inner life a mystery as he reluctantly moves into a beat-up trailer at a temporary FEMA camp, struggling to make it hospitable for his grade-school daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), who primarily lives with Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and Ruby’s boyfriend, Robbie (Sam Engbring). Dusty is not a bad father or a snide former spouse — everybody in his orbit likes him, including Ruby’s ailing mother Bess (Amy Madigan). But when Callie-Rose informs Dusty that Ruby said he underachieved in school, we believe her. “Rebuilding” doesn’t reveal much about Dusty before the ranch was incinerated, but what eventually becomes clear is that he’s always been something of a disappointment.
It’s a performance that requires O’Connor to hint at an ineffable void. The character operates at a remove from even those closest to him — he has a kindly spirit, but he can’t quite connect. Dusty and Ruby were adolescent sweethearts, but the audience doesn’t need to know the whole backstory to guess why they broke up. He’s the kind of guy weighed down by an internal inertia, asleep while standing up, stuck in a rut. At least he had his ranch. But after the wildfire, Dusty’s omnipresent cowboy hat is all that remains from the only life he’s ever known.
In keeping with Walker-Silverman’s naturalistic approach, “Rebuilding” eschews a conventional plot, instead observing Dusty’s negotiation of an outside world he’s tried to avoid. He gingerly makes friends at the FEMA camp, most memorably with Mila, depicted with gruff authenticity by Kali Reis. This de facto support group has no big inspirational speeches to offer Dusty, just a weary resilience to keep going because, really, what else can they do? Some of the film’s finest moments involve O’Connor ceding the spotlight to his co-stars, each of them so offhandedly genuine one might assume Walker-Silverman gathered actual wildfire survivors.
The movie’s verisimilitude may trigger some Los Angeles viewers who know all too well the pain of recovering from a natural disaster. When “Rebuilding” premiered at Sundance in January, Southern California festivalgoers couldn’t help but feel a queasy déjà vu: The Eaton and Palisades fires were still raging, destroying communities and displacing so many. That horror and sorrow loomed heavy over those initial screenings, and no doubt for many in our city, 10 months will hardly be enough time to enter the proper headspace to appreciate Dusty’s processing of his disorienting new normal.
But while Walker-Silverman couldn’t have imagined his movie’s jarring real-world parallels, “Rebuilding” is as much a character study as it is a warning about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home. The story’s studied minor-key tone can occasionally come across as mannered, yet “Rebuilding” possesses its own delicate grace, especially once Dusty endures other losses — some personal, others more existential. Walker-Silverman introduces a minor twist near the end that comes across as a little too narratively convenient, but one can hardly begrudge him seeking a sliver of hope for those whose sense of place has been obliterated. As Dusty learns, when you’ve lost nearly everything, all you’ve got is whatever’s left behind.
‘Rebuilding’
Rated: PG, for thematic elements, some drug material, and brief language
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, Nov. 21 at AMC Century City 15 and AMC Burbank 16
A game-winning trick play from the Baltimore Ravens’ Mark Andrews and a stunning catch by the Los Angeles Chargers’ Keenan Allen top the best plays from week 11 in the NFL.
A 99-yard touchdown return from New York Jets running back Kene Nwangwu and Keenan Allen’s history-making catch for the Los Angeles Chargers top the best plays from week 10 of the NFL season.
He may not have done double duty as host and musical guest the way Carpenter did, but Miles Teller appeared to fully embrace the challenge of returning to host for a second time (the first was in 2022). The “Top Gun 2: Maverick” star, who’ll next be appearing in the movie “Eternity,” gave a solid performance, appearing in nearly every sketch, including the cold open and two pre-recorded videos.
He first appeared as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a candidate for New York mayor, in the cold open with help from Ramy Youssef and Shane Gillis as opponents Zohran Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa.
Teller handled it all well; he’s good with accents and earned strong laughs, especially playing two characters at the same time in the “Property Brothers” sketch and as Cuomo in the cold open.
This week’s cold open was one of the stronger (or at least funnier) political sketches of the season so far, tackling the New York mayoral race. As hosted by Errol Louis (Kenan Thompson), “the least famous person to be impersonated on ‘SNL,’ ” the debate sketch portrayed Cuomo (Teller) as a sexually harassing (“Yadda yadda yadda, honk honk, squeeze squeeze) panderer to Jewish voters; Mamdani (Youssef) as a force-smiling, TikTok-flirting candidate who’s pretty sure he won’t be able to implement his promises; and long-shot candidate Sliwa (Gillis) as an “old-fashioned New York nut” with one traumatic story after another to recount. The biggest surprise may have been Gillis, who as Sliwa recounted stories about being hung by his testicles and getting assaulted by a Times Square Spider-Man. Where was this energy when Gillis hosted “SNL”? As has been the habit on many a cold open, President Trump (James Austin Johnson) interrupts the proceedings to mock the candidates and insert his own commentary. This time, that included singing a song from “Phantom of the Opera” to conclude the sketch.
Teller’s monologue was short and simple, relaying how as a kid who moved around most of his childhood, “SNL” was a constant. He shared a photo of himself and his sisters dressed up as the “Night at the Roxbury” characters from the show and then made up a list of memories from the show, like having his first beer in the audience and falling over after having a few beers. Teller mentioned that he and his wife lost their Palisades home in January’s Los Angeles fires. As such, he made sure to point out the fire exits for the audience.
Best sketch of the night: An extreme White House makeover
The Property Brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott (Teller times two) meet their toughest clients yet: Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (Chloe Fineman) who need help with their current renovation of the White House to make room for a new ballroom. Melania shared her skeleton and withered tree decorations (“They are for Christmas,” she said), and the couple complained that 55,000 square feet and 132 rooms just isn’t enough space. With a budget of “$350 million to infinity” the brothers get to work with the help of park rangers and astronauts working through the government shutdown. But when it comes to getting paid for their work, there’s a problem. “Aren’t you guys from Canada?” the president asks. Then he calls ICE on them.
Also good: Nobody asked for this much transparency in news
On a show called Newspoint, the host (Fineman) and her guest (Thompson) are trying to have a serious news discussion, but because the show has opened up its full newsroom to viewers, all the workers in the background draw attention. Among them are Mikey Day, who awkwardly notices the cameras are on him before spilling a carrier of drinks, Bowen Yang as a worker who gets electrocuted by a copy machine and Teller, who has manga erotica up on his work screen. It’s nice to see some physical comedy from Day in particular and the sketch’s visual gags work nicely.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: George Santos is back, untruthful as ever!
Andrew Dismukes and Ashley Padilla (who should be a full cast member at this point instead of a featured player) played a couple who just made out but are trying to discuss the government shutdown. But it was Yang as chronic liar George Santos who stole “Update” (and some jewels) after Yang missed an opportunity on the last “SNL” episode to play the former representative, whose prison term was commuted by Trump. Santos claimed he finished the New York marathon, which hadn’t happened yet, and kept interrupting his chat with “Update” co-host Colin Jost to take calls with prisoners with a jail window and phone he brought with him. He purported to speak with Ghislaine Maxwell, Luigi Mangione and Sean “Diddy” Combs before revealing that the key to making prison rice pudding is preheating the toilet to 350 degrees. Santos ended the segment by revealing the necklace he stole from the Louvre and insisting that he’d just won the World Series.
