Last year I read Tom Stoppard: A Life, by Hermione Lee. It's long: more than I needed to know about Stoppard, or really about anything. Many of the best parts are excerpts from Stoppard's nonfiction writing: essays, and journal entries and letters. And the very best is the final paragraph of the book: It's a description of a school production of The Tempest in the 1950's:
"When it became time for Ariel to leave the action of the play he turned and he ran up the stage, away from the audience. Now the stage was a lawn, and the lawn backed onto a lake. He ran across the grass and got to the edge of the lake, and he just kept running, because the director had had the foresight to put a plank walkway just underneath the surface of the water. So you have to imagine: it's become dusk, and quite a lot of the artificial lighting has come on, and back there in the gloom is this lake. And Ariel says his last words and he turns and he runs and gets to the water and he runs and he goes splish splash, splish splash right across the lake into the enfolding dark, until one can only just hear his footsteps making these little sounds, and then ultimately his little figure disappeared from view. And at that moment, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited and just went whoosh into the sky and burst into lots of sparks. All the sparks went out one by one and Ariel had gone. Here's the thing: you can't write anything as good as that. When you look it up, it says "Exit, Ariel."
Happy New Year, all!
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Stephen Gregg
Playwright
CA
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