Professional Foul

by Tom Stoppard

BBC recording of the Stoppard play.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, School, British Literature

67 pages, Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1987

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

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

”The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie.” The Power of the Powerless, Vaclav Havel

Despite all the trademark wit and verbal dexterity one expects from Tom Stoppard, this 1977 television play has a sharp focus on the political situation in what was then Czechoslovakia. The main character, Anderson, is a philosophy professor from the U.K. attending a conference in Prague primarily because he wants to see a “football” game and the conference is covering his expenses. As he says, “A World Cup qualifier is not just a football match”. As Anderson witnesses the repressive political system first hand, he begins to reconsider the ethics of his position.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does it mean to be ethical? Where do the rights of the individual end and those of the larger group begin? These are deep questions - but a philosophy paper and a philosophy conference in Czechoslovakia will not bring down a totalitarian system.

[Zelda T · Rating 4 out of 5]

football term , needs to be understood to fully understand this play.

[Tuckova]

Actually read the play, not the audio cassette. I liked it (we performed it) -- it's not the greatest verbal felicity but it did a good job with a serious subject.

[Tom O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stoppard smuggles in a human message wrapped in a witty and occasionally superficial seeming package. The contrast between the freedoms enjoyed by some and not others and the responsibilities that places on the former is an evocative theme that leads to a powerful finale.

As always the wordplay is of the highest level, often working both on the first impact and sustaining deeper analysis.