Tom Stoppard: A Life

by Hermione Lee

Charon remembers them well: “Theseus—trying to break the chains that held fast his friend, to take him back with him from the Underworld. But it can’t be done, sir. It can’t be done.” — On the first day of rehearsals, in August 1997, David West came to talk to the actors about Latin pronunciation. Richard Eyre noted his warning to them: “Don’t copy me exactly, I’m from Aberdeen.” Eyre was very nervous that day, starting work on his first ever Stoppard production. But Stoppard said to him: “This must be just another day for you, you do it all the time. I only have one of these every five years.” He was there almost every day in rehearsal, “droll and self-mocking, generous and sanguine,” as Eyre described him, though sometimes a little too “interventionist.” They got on very well, and Eyre was happy to be working with him at last. Ironically, the situation was the reverse of Arcadia. The incoming head of the National, Trevor Nunn, had wanted to do Invention, and had indeed thought he was going to, since Stoppard talked to him a great deal about the play when they were both in New York, and they went on discussing it—at one point, Nunn remembered stopping him from switching Acts One and Two around. But, this time, Stoppard felt it belonged to Richard Eyre. And because he was a year later with it than expected, it turned out to be Eyre’s last production at the National.