Tom Stoppard

At the beginning of the 20th century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, Austria. But Hermann Merz, a factory owner and baptised Jew now married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. We follow his family’s story across half a century, passing through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. A company of 40 actors represent each generation of the family in this epic, but intimate play.

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Set in a private nursing home, The smooth running of the home and the peace of mind of its staff is disrupted by the arrival of a patient, John Brown. He is warm, charming and can easily pay for his room... the only problem is that he is perfectly healthy. All he wants is to get away from the outside world.

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On a country estate in Derbyshire, Arcadia moves fluidly between events in 1809 and the modern inhabitants who are eager to discover what really happened in the past. We begin in 1809 where we will meet Thomasina, a teenager and mathematical prodigy, who works with her tutor Septimus. Yet we learn there are many secrets within the family on the estate. Affairs of the heart, unrequited love, and debates about chaos theory and the ideal gardening landscape flow throughout these scenes in the past. When the story moves to 1992, a garden historian and a literature professor visit to unearth the past. Was Lord Byron actually a guest? Was there a duel? Why is there a hermitage on the estate? What do the the current inhabitants of Sibley Park know about the past? Scenes move fluidly between two centuries, with an increasing reminder to cherish our time together. Arcadia is a play about passion, longing, astrophysics, and both the strength and fragility of the human heart

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An artist falls for a married young woman while he's commissioned to paint her portrait. The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes to build a future together.

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In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

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The story of a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette in the midst of World War I and a Europe on the brink of profound change.

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A BBC schools programme broadcast about Tom Stoppard’s abridged version of the play which was performed by the National Youth Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London. The televised recording of the performance is preceded by comments on the work in progress from stage director Paul Roseby and writer Tom Stoppard. Jeremy Irons, who played Antonio in the film version of The Merchant of Venice (2004), comments on the merits of producing a play with young actors.

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An esoteric play portraying the life of poet A. E. Housman focusing specifically on his personal life and love for a college classmate.

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The story of the WWII project to crack the code behind the Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent to their submarines.

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Young William Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter', before it's even written. When lovely noblewoman Viola de Lesseps auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love — and Shakespeare's play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship intensifies, the comedy soon transforms into tragedy.

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Private eye Philip Marlowe and his bride move to a desert town, where he uncovers a land scheme.

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In the year 1935, a teen named Billy Bathgate finds first love while becoming the protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from the play 'Hamlet', find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. The duo encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.

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Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

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A fictionalized autobiographical play written by Czechoslovakian playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel in 1984 upon his release from a four-and-one-half-year prison term for political subversion. The play focuses on two days in the life of a dissident writer who is awaiting the knock at the door that may send him to prison.

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Rupert Purvis jumps off a bridge onto a dog, causing problems for Blair, his superior at MI5. Blair must convince Hogbin, the agent who's been tailing Purvis, of which side Purvis is really on--once he finds out what it is.

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Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

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Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

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An account of how Lech Walesa and the "Solidarity" trade union confronted the might of Communist dictatorship in Poland.

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When their boss goes off to Vienna to dine with his fiancé, his clerks decide this may be their last chance for an adventure (razzle) and head for the Big City. Zangler must cancel his plans, as his niece has run off with her boyfriend. Naturally, soon everyone is running into everyone else!

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When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

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Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is a stage play by Tom Stoppard with music by André Previn. It was first performed in 1977. The play criticizes the Soviet practice of treating political dissidence as a form of mental illness. Its title derives from the popular mnemonic used by music students to remember the notes on the lines of the treble clef. The filming was undertaken at a live performance at Wembley Conference Centre in April 1978, conducted by Previn.

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Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

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An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.

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Three philosophy professors travel to Prague for a conference. One of them, Anderson, is forced to rethink his ideas on ethics when a former student is arrested by the Czech authorities for writing about individualist approaches to morality.

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The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time.

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One hot June day, three friends decide there is nothing they would like to do more than to get away from London. A boating holiday with lots of fresh air and exercise would be just the very thing, or so their doctors tell them. So, after debating the merits of hotel or camp beds and what to pack, they set off on their voyage - a trip up the Thames from Henley to Oxford - but very quickly find themselves ill-equipped for the trials of riverbank life.

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A lexicographer's room gets trashed and notes scattered just as he was in the process of compiling a dictionary.

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A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.

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An allied agent is sent out into an obscure country to find a Russian Agent who has been thrown out of Russia for defection. He finds a broken man who drowns his days in drink, and feels sympathy for him.

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ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

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An early version of Jumpers - nothing happens at random - Doollee

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An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.

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An anthology series with the premise that there is a story behind every door.

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Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

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