I am listening to a phone message left by Sir Tom Stoppard, struck anew by the plumminess of his voice and the High Brit accent, undercut by a faint Mitteleuropean trace in his rolling r’s and the flattened e in Daphne. Stoppard is in New York to attend previews of his much-heralded new play, Leopoldstadt, which opened to rave reviews in London three years ago, and we are trying to arrange for an interview sometime in his overcrowded schedule.
Having written about him in 2006, I know that Stoppard attends these previews conscientiously, tweaking and rethinking until the last possible moment. In a 1995 interview with the New York Times drama critic Mel Gussow, he explained his approach: “It’s the equivalent of the potter and the clay. I just love getting my hands in it…. I change things to accommodate something in the scenery, or something in the lighting. Happily.”
