Tom Stoppard Plays 4: Dalliance, Undiscovered Country, Rough

Description: "Dalliance" "Undiscovered Country" "Rough Crossing" "On the Razzle" "The Seagull" This fourth volume of Tom Stoppard's work for the stage brings together five of his most celebrated translations and adaptations of plays by Arthur Schnitzler ("Dalliance" and "Undiscovered Country"), Ferenc Molnar ("Rough Crossing," a classic farce set aboard an ocean liner), Johann Nestroy ("On the Razzle," a mad chase through Vienna), and Anton Chekhov ("The Seagull," the classic Russian country tale). According to "The Times" of London, "Adaptation in Stoppard's terms means finding a sympathetic text and using it as a springboard for invention that leaves the original far behind." In adapting these plays--some classics, some nearly forgotten--for the modern stage, Tom Stoppard has added his own unique elements of dazzling wit and verbal brilliance, hilarious parody and cutting satire, to create works that stand as exceptional works of theater that do not belong to any one age.

Author Biography: Tom Stoppard was born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia. His early years were spent in Singapore, India and, from 1946, England, after his mother married an officer in the British Army. Leaving school at seventeen, Stoppard worked as a reporter in Bristol, before moving to London to work as a theatre critic and feature writer. During this period he began to write plays for radio and for the stage and published his only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon. His first major success, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, was produced in London in 1967 at the Old Vic after critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival. Subsequent plays include Enter a Free Man, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (with Andre Previn), After Magritte, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, the trilogy The Coast of Utopia and Rock 'n' Roll. His radio plays include If You're Glad, I'll Be Frank, Albert's Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died and In the Native State. Work for television includes Professional Foul and Squaring the Circle. His film credits include Empire of the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which he also directed, Shakespeare in Love (with Marc Norman) and Enigma.$$$In August 2002 the Royal National Theatre in London premiered Stoppard's trilogy - Voyage, Shipwreck and Salvage - three sequential self-contained plays that comprise The Coast of Utopia.