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Plays 3: A Separate Peace / Teeth / Another Moon Called Earth / Neutral Ground / Professional Foul / Squaring the Circle
Plays
A Separate Peace
Teeth
Another Moon Called Earth
Neutral Ground
Professional Foul
Squaring the Circle Introduced by the author, this third collection of plays written 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 and timely Professional Foul demonstrates. In his introduction the author briefly describes how the pieces came to be written and the circumstances of their original production.
A Separate Peace
Teeth
Another Moon Called Earth
Neutral Ground
Professional Foul
Squaring the Circle Introduced by the author, this third collection of plays written 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 and timely Professional Foul demonstrates. In his introduction the author briefly describes how the pieces came to be written and the circumstances of their original production.
272 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 1998
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About the author
Tom Stoppard
150 books1,014 followersSir 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 30, 2017
Strangely concerned with unfaithful wives and Eastern Bloc communism, perhaps drawing a connection between the two in roughly twenty years of screenwriting for TV. The characters in the earlier plays seem somewhat dim, despite their professional training as doctors, dentists and historians, not seeing what is essentially wrong with what is going on around them. The later plays puts a spin on this set-up, where the protagonists choose to avoid seeing social problems in the Cold War setting.
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February 13, 2025FAH: read a different genre (drama) and possible a non-English author, going by his allegiances in the latter three plays. "Neutral Ground" also starts with a reenactment of the exact Marx Brothers scene from "Go West" which Arms had streamed live, strange co-incidences.
These are short plays that were staged for TV. The first makes me think Stoppard had never been in a hospital before, otherwise the protagonists escape into its fresh white cleanliness and quiet makes inherent sense. Teeth is about infidelity and hence a bit bearded. Another Moon Called Earth has a character called Penelope that speaks in the way we are used to from Stoppard, and whom he later re-used. The aspect of blatantly shown infidelity isn't funny on the page but might be live.
While "Neutral Ground" leads into the theme of political plays about Eastern Europe,"Professional Foul" IIRC is the most lauded, and shows the by now familiar Cold War (in Czechoslovakia), the visiting academics mingled with football players. The reason to refuse to transport a few sheafs of paper seem stupid and selfish, though they are couched in philosophical terms of right and wrong - because the writer has a young son. The woman alone would never have done, just a vessel to carry and birth the male child. This will be exactly the same in the lesser play "Squaring the Circle", where Walesa's constantly pregnant wife exists amidst his offspring.
(I wonder if I would love the plays I did if I reread them. R&G don't seem to have discussed "women" and on stage they might have toned it down. But the 80s are not that long ago. It doesn't help that on the author photo younger Stoppard looks like current Neil Gaiman).
"Squaring" is the hardest to read play, because it's only a retelling of the politics in Poland around 1980. It starts out in a then possible groundbreaking way? We know it from Charlie Brooker's TV shows but then Monty Python had already done it? "Everything is true except for the words and the images" which are then changed and the scene often replayed by different characters after the other. This happens not enough when reading though. One point may be that nothing changes, although another is what makes Poland (via its Church and long history) stand out amongst the many countries Russia had swalloed then. Apart from the aforementioned trick, there is nothing that I could find in this play.
These are short plays that were staged for TV. The first makes me think Stoppard had never been in a hospital before, otherwise the protagonists escape into its fresh white cleanliness and quiet makes inherent sense. Teeth is about infidelity and hence a bit bearded. Another Moon Called Earth has a character called Penelope that speaks in the way we are used to from Stoppard, and whom he later re-used. The aspect of blatantly shown infidelity isn't funny on the page but might be live.
While "Neutral Ground" leads into the theme of political plays about Eastern Europe,"Professional Foul" IIRC is the most lauded, and shows the by now familiar Cold War (in Czechoslovakia), the visiting academics mingled with football players. The reason to refuse to transport a few sheafs of paper seem stupid and selfish, though they are couched in philosophical terms of right and wrong - because the writer has a young son. The woman alone would never have done, just a vessel to carry and birth the male child. This will be exactly the same in the lesser play "Squaring the Circle", where Walesa's constantly pregnant wife exists amidst his offspring.
(I wonder if I would love the plays I did if I reread them. R&G don't seem to have discussed "women" and on stage they might have toned it down. But the 80s are not that long ago. It doesn't help that on the author photo younger Stoppard looks like current Neil Gaiman).
"Squaring" is the hardest to read play, because it's only a retelling of the politics in Poland around 1980. It starts out in a then possible groundbreaking way? We know it from Charlie Brooker's TV shows but then Monty Python had already done it? "Everything is true except for the words and the images" which are then changed and the scene often replayed by different characters after the other. This happens not enough when reading though. One point may be that nothing changes, although another is what makes Poland (via its Church and long history) stand out amongst the many countries Russia had swalloed then. Apart from the aforementioned trick, there is nothing that I could find in this play.
August 7, 2022
Uneven, as any collection spanning almost twenty years would be, but Professional Foul is a masterpiece.
May 23, 2016
This group of Tom Stoppard's plays were written for television and represent a bit of a departure from his earlier writing.
The first few plays are similar to what you may have read in Stoppard's other work. Urbane, literate, witty plays heavy on wordplay, allusions, and inserting abstract ideas into the play. Then, the back half of the book is consumed by pieces that are basically straight up Cold War spy thrillers.
It was, to say the least, not what I was expecting. Nonetheless, I ended up enjoying those writings as much as Stoppard's other plays. Another solid entry in Stoppard's anthology of his work, and probably the best of the first three volumes as far as I'm concerned.
The first few plays are similar to what you may have read in Stoppard's other work. Urbane, literate, witty plays heavy on wordplay, allusions, and inserting abstract ideas into the play. Then, the back half of the book is consumed by pieces that are basically straight up Cold War spy thrillers.
It was, to say the least, not what I was expecting. Nonetheless, I ended up enjoying those writings as much as Stoppard's other plays. Another solid entry in Stoppard's anthology of his work, and probably the best of the first three volumes as far as I'm concerned.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews