directed by blanka zizka
NEWS & NOTES
HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU
Philadelphia Magazine: February 2000
Stepping Out
Tom Stoppard's newest play, THE INVENTION OF LOVE, makes its East Coast debut at The Wilma Theater February 9th through March 26th. Like most of this Tony-, Oscar- and Olivier-award winner's work, it is a journey through complex ideas and deep emotions, a play that requires audiences to think The unlikely subject is A.E. Housman, an eminent Latin scholar and minor poet in turn-of-the-century England. We caught up with the British playwright in Philadelphia, fresh off the plane from London, as he reconstituted himself with some cookies, conversation and cigarettes.
PM: Why Housman?
TS: I was attracted by these very different sides of the man. He writes romantic, pessimistic poems much concerned with death. But his day job was Latin - he was a textual critic, which meant that his job was to figure out what the ancient classical poets really wrote. Also, he was gay, and the play is a love story as much as anything. He fell in love with a fellow undergraduate at Oxford when they were about 19 years old - a friend who was not gay and who wasn't interested - and Housman remained in love and devoted for the rest of his life. It was a sad love story. I didn't know about that until shortly after I started looking into Housman. I was taken aback and disappointed, because I knew that as a scholar he'd worked on the poetry of Propertius, who fell in love with an older lady who gave him a bad time. And I thought it would have suited me very well if Housman had been in love with an older woman who gave him a bad time. But then maybe the play would have ended up quite glib.
PM: Critics routinely call your work brilliant. Does that weigh on you when you start something new?
TS: No. I've never written anything as good as they say.
PM: What's the best thing you've ever written?
TS: There are bits of TRAVESTIES and just odd bits in ARCADIA - and, dare I say, even the odd bit in this one, maybe - which seem to be better than I am.
PM: You once said something about feeling like a drug smuggler's dupe.
TS: It has to do with people telling you what your plays really mean. I'm just making the point that it's all true - if you see something in it, then it's there - but for me, it's like somebody put it in my suitcase and is saying, "What's this?" and I think, "Well, yes, it's there. I don't remember packing it, but there it is."
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