Squaring the Circle

by Tom Stoppard

Presents a dramatization of the conflict between the Solidarity trade union and the Polish state

Genres: Drama, Plays, Politics, History

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Sir Tom Stoppard was 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.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Holly Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of dry for Stoppard, but the intro is terrific.

[Edmund Chattoe-Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very nutritious collection of plays about the tension between individual freedom and "the state" in the Soviet Union and its satellites (and more than justifies replacing an edition of the second two plays alone). STC is well constructed but lacks the Stoppard sparkle as a dramatic statement of the rise and "fall" of Solidarity in Poland. I wonder if the lack of sparkle comes from the fascinating preface about trying to make it so it could be shown in the US. This preface shows why towering hierarchies of "creatives" with unknown added value may make so much anodyne and incoherent US TV. EGBDF shows it is possible to be hilarious about a subject which could not be less funny (the Soviet abuse of psychiatry) and yet the humour is very serious and actually generated by the brutal system itself: If you say sane people are put in mental hospitals, you must be crazy ... PF contrasts moral philosophers at a congress in Eastern Europe with the personal moral choices the situation puts them in and the "morality" of the state speaking for the individual good. Less laugh out loud but equally thought provoking. Another benefit of these plays is that they all read effectively and you don't feel you are missing the point by not being able to see them.

[Paul Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

The three plays all relate to Communist totalitarianism - but still have something to say to today's ethical and political dilemmas. They are also quite funny, in a dry sort of way.