Tom Stoppard : a life / Ira Nadel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nadel, Ira Bruce.

Standardized Title:

Double act

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stoppard, Tom.

Dramatists, English--20th century--Biography.

Dramatists, English.

Czechs.

Great Britain.

Czechs--Great Britain--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xviii, 621 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First Palgrave Macmillan edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Summary:

Tom Stoppard has written some of the most challenging and fanciful plays of the 20th century. His work, from the early Jumpers to the film Shakespeare in Love to the current play The Invention of Love, has in effect changed the landscape of drama. Witty, erudite, passionate, abstract, clever (some would say too clever by half), his works are like no one else's. Who is Tom Stoppard -- the Czech-born son of Jews who became the singularly English man of letters? In this vibrant, critical portrait, Ira Nadel weaves life and works into a fascinating chronicle of Stoppard's world on English and American stages. Peopled with such characters as Diana Rigg, John Wood, and Billy Crudup, the book untangles Stoppard's genius against the backdrop of Broadway and London's West End.

Contents:

1 Deserts of Bohemia 1

2 Lavender Street 17

3 Et in Arcadia Ego 39

4 At the Paragon 73

5 Swinging London 100

6 Berlin Cowboy 128

7 Rosencrantz on the Royal Mile 149

8 The Old Vic and a New Playwright 175

9 Swinging from an Epigram 205

10 Artist Ascending a Staircase 236

11 Marzipan Clocks 259

12 Czech Mates 281

13 Incurable Semantic 307

14 Broadway to Brazil 331

15 Eloquent Equations 354

16 An English Eden 389

17 The Classic Romantic: Shakespeare in Love 412

18 Byron in a Laptop 425

19 New York, Prague 453

20 Multiple Fascination 471

21 Camouflaged by Display 500.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 589-592) and index.

ISBN:

0312237782 :

OCLC:

50119058