Context + Continuity

Reviews from the San Francisco Production of Stoppard's The Hard Problem

I haven't been lucky enough to see The Hard Problem produced, yet, but I'm ever hopeful.  I've read the play and it does seem slight compared to works such as Arcadia and Travesties and so many other.  However, those are mountain tops in the theater and The Hard Problem tackles issues no other playwright thinks about. 

With his first new play in nearly a decade, Tom Stoppard aims to 'stretch your mind just a little bit'

The Los Angeles Times.

"I don't think I've ever spent half an hour in my life doing research,” said playwright Tom Stoppard when asked about the impressive erudition behind his intellectually dazzling comedies. [more]

 

A.C.T. drama tackles altruism, God, opposites — with wit

The Ross Valley Reporter.

“The Hard Problem” is 79-year-old Tom Stoppard’s first play in nine years.

It was worth the almost decade-long intermission. [more]

 

Tom Stoppard Solves The Hard Problem

SF Weekly.

Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem is an ordinary melodrama disguised as an intellectual exercise. The settings — in academia and at a brain science institute — are smartly dressed up distractions. There are numerous, often heady discussions that revolve around human behavior, our motivations and what it means to be altruistic or selfish. Wisely, the playwright stands Hillary (Brenda Meaney) at the center of the story. Even though she’s a psychologist at a prestigious institute, Hillary, in a white lab coat, wears her heart on its sleeve. [more]

 

'The Hard Problem' At ACT Is Dramatically, and Academically, Muddy

SFist.

The "hard problem" of this play's title refers to the very nature of consciousness, and spoiler alert, Tom Stoppard — a playwright whose beloved Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead have masterfully illuminated that timeless question — hasn't come any closer to a solution with his latest work. That may be because The Hard Problem, which is in its West Coast premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater under the direction of longtime Stoppard collaborator Carey Perloff, is unsure if it's a drama or a morality play, poring over somewhat tired philosophical problems and psychological studies from the prisoner dilemma to the Milgram experiment rather than fully dramatizing or complicating them anew. [more]

 

Stoppard’s The Hard Problem at ACT: A High-Energy Exploration of Philosophical Ideas and Conflicts

The Huffington Post.

Can everything in human life, or in existence of any sort, be explained by higher math and supercomputers? Some scientists believe it can, though that secular grail is yet to be reached. Are there qualities of life that defy reduction to numbers, such as consciousness and altruism? Some scientists believe there are, as do the millions who attend churches and synagogues and mosques, along with nonbelievers who doubt the infallibility of science.

Those puzzles and responses hardly sound like grist for something theatrical, but Tom Stoppard is hardly a commonplace playwright. Since 1966, when he turned Hamlet inside out into the tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he has been charting new directions for the theater.

With The Hard Problem, which is receiving its West Coast premiere at the Geary Theater in San Francisco, he has outdone himself by delving into philosophical concepts that encompass biology, computer science, math, ethics, survival strategies, the value of prayer, the dynamics of hedge funds and more. Oh, also, he didn’t ignore love and sex, both heterosexual and homosexual. [more]

 

‘The Hard Problem’ is full of problems

The San Francisco Chronicle.

Like every play in his decades-long oeuvre, the latest from multiple Tony winner Tom Stoppard makes you think.

But unlike many of his other works, which include “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Arcadia” and “The Real Thing,” “The Hard Problem,” whose West Coast premiere opened Wednesday, Oct. 26, at ACT, might make you question whether you want to think, or at least think along with the people he’s created.

It’s not that the ideas the drama explores, as it follows the budding career of Hilary (Brenda Meaney), a young psychologist, aren’t endlessly fascinating. It asks whether altruism can ever spring from a pure desire to do good or whether there’s always, ultimately, some self-serving, if subconscious and biological, aim. [more]

 

 

The Daily Beast, 1/10/16: Tom Stoppard: I Want To Be Like Verdi

I found this interview with Sir Stoppard timed to the release of a Blu-Ray disc of Rosencratz & Guilderstern Are Dead.  The scope of the interview goes well beyond that topic.  

As you go through life, does writing get easier, harder?

For me it has to do with energy. So in a rather banal sense it gets harder, it takes me longer to produce a given amount of work.

And, of course, there is the sense, the general rule with artists turns out to be that from the long perspective of hindsight, you liked their early work.

That is a small joke that passes between writers, especially between writers when they are friendly and prove their friendship by insulting each other.

They tell each other, I loved your early work. And there are very few great artists who have done major work once they approach 70 or 80. When I think of my favorite writers, it was the way they started off that captured me and left me captive.

I’m not an opera person at all, but I think of Verdi, for example, as someone who was writing at the age of 80 work comparable to what he was doing 50 years earlier.

I’d like that to be true of me, and in about 18 months I will be 80, so I’ll have to set about trying to prove it. I don’t know that I can. 

[link]

Sir Tom Bankrolls WWII Action Flick

TOM STOPPARD, widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, is to produce a £50m movie based on one of the most extraordinary stories of heroism and compassion during the Second World War.

Stoppard, who wrote the screenplay to Steven Spielberg’s film Empire of the Sun, has acquired the rights to the bestselling book A Higher Call, the true story of how a German fighter pilot saved the wounded pilot and stricken crew of an allied bomber in 1943. The two pilots were reunited several decades later.

[more]

"Shakespeare in Love" Still Moving to West End Stage

As reported here almost a year ago, Shakespeare in Love is headed to Broadway.  (It's a pity Sir Tom isn't writing the play...)  It's scheduled to go into previews in early July and open near the end of the month.  [more]

Hey, Kids: Mark the Date on Your Calendar!

According to our sources [here], Sir Tom Stoppard has a new play that will debut at the National Theatre sometime before March 2015.  I'm sure there's more to come and I know I can't wait.