Celebrating Stoppard

Strange to think of Tom Stoppard attaining three score years and ten. It seems a mere nanosecond since we were first dazzled by his disturbing take on Shakespeare, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and his plays are still characterised by the tumbling ideas and linguistic foreplay of youthful ingenuity. To celebrate his birthday, BBC Radio has come up with an unusual season of plays that spans the stations from Radio Three to BBC7. This week you could have heard Arcadia and his 15-Minute Hamlet on Radio Four, while on Radio Three the Nightwaves team discussed the extraordinary success of R&G, which was premiered by Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company at the Old Vic in 1967. His most recent hit, Rock ’n’ Roll, and R&G itself are coming to Radio Three in the coming fortnight, while BBC7 is giving Stoppard’s post-colonial exercise In the Native State another airing.

On radio, his plays are more effective.