Indian Ink

Description: Flora Crewe, a young poet travelling in India in 1930, has her portrait painted by a local artist. More than fifty years later, the artist's son visits Flor'as sister in London while her would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India.
The alternation of place and period in Tom Stoppard's new play (based on his radio play "In The Native State") makes for a rich and moving exploration of intimate lives set against one of the great shafts of history, the emergence of the Indian subcontinent from the grip of Europe.


Review: "Simply let yourself go to be swirled up in Tom Stoppard's" Indian Ink", a layered comedy about an English poet's artistic-erotic visit to India in 1930 and the attempt of others to come to terms with its legacy 55 years later."--"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"


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.