Word: stopparded
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...also being able to interject a barb when the opportunity arises. It’s remarkable that Stoppard’s play, first performed in 1993 at the dawn of the computer era, does not seem dated by the exponential leaps in technology that have occurred since that date. Stoppard frequently uses the computer as an analogue to the themes of entropy and complexity, and in an age when computers have become so thoroughly integrated into every aspect of life, this sort of philosophizing might seem stale or platitudinous. But those involved in this production have taken great care...
...death sentence that didn't have emotional uplift. In another new movie, The Savages, the issue ostensibly addressed is that of middle-aged siblings saddled with a cranky dad suffering from Alzheimer's ("Al What's-his-name's Disease," as a character says in the Tom Stoppard play Rock 'n' Roll). But that ordeal turns out to be the work of but a month, not decades - just long enough for the brother and sister to learn the cleansing importance of family solidarity. The notion that terminal illness is mainly an opportunity for elevating lessons on the meaning of life...
...Stoppard, who rolls his r's with a Continental flourish that somehow manages not to seem affected, bristles at the notion that his work is too highbrow or élitist for an ordinary audience--never mind that the New York Times felt the need to print a reading list for theatergoers who wanted to bone up before seeing The Coast of Utopia. He notes that his intellectual obsessions are hardly unique or rarefied. "The market for books about science and philosophy on the level on which I deal with things is a best-seller market," he says, pointing to authors...
...Indeed, Stoppard has always stood apart from many other British playwrights of his generation, like David Hare, for avoiding an overtly political (usually left-wing) point of view. He describes his politics as "timid libertarian." Yet he can rev up a pretty bold rant on Britain's "highly regulated society," which he thinks is "betraying the principle of parliamentary democracy." There was the garden party he threw recently, for example, where because there was a pond on the property, he was required to hire two lifeguards. "The whole notion that we're all responsible for ourselves...
...call Tom Stoppard a snob. But try finding a political rant in America as polished as that...