Remembering Tom Stoppard | with lifelong friend Gerry Parker
5 Dec 2025
Like everyone across the theatre community, we were saddened to hear of the passing of Tom Stoppard. He had a deep connection to Bristol and this theatre so we wanted to pay a special tribute to him.
His lifelong friend Gerry Parker is a journalist and reviewer for the Bristol Post and he has kindly given us a personal perspective to share with you...
Can you tell us a little bit about your friendship with Tom Stoppard?
I first met Tom in the late 1950's when he, his Mother, elder brother Peter, and stepfather came to live in Long Ashton. Both Peter and Tom enjoyed a game of tennis and so with my future wife, we all would meet up on the local tennis courts.
Whilst Peter became articled to accountants Bennett's in Queens Square, Tom took a job with Bristol United Press. As a junior reporter one of his jobs was to cover local dramas for the Clevedon Mercury and he quickly showed his love of, and flair for, using words.
When Tom decided to leave the comparative safety of a job with Bristol United Press to join a London based magazine [I think it was called Scene] I said, "Good prospects are there with this magazine?'
"Good lord no", he replied, "I shouldn't think it will last more than a year or so, but if I want to get anywhere with my writing I must be in London amongst that theatrical world".
Before he left, his Mother, Peter and our respective wives Lesley and Bridget, said that we would be in the theatre on the opening night of his first play in London. And so on April 11th 1967 we all gathered in the Old Vic on the Waterloo Road for the London opening night of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
What was Tom's relationship with Bristol? Why was it so important to him?
Bristol was important to Tom because it was via the people he met there as a journalist, and access to new writing via the Bristol Old Vic, that he was able to break away from the more staid lifestyle that his stepfather would have preferred him to follow; he was always more interested in fishing on Chew Valley and Blagdon Lakes than the Theatre.
We know Tom Stoppard liked to hang out at Bristol Old Vic (and was often fed and watered by Renatos restaurant next door when he was an impoverished young reporter). But how do you think Bristol Old Vic impacted his life?
In those days Bristol Old Vic presented three groups of four plays each year, described by then Artistic Director Val May as one classic, one comedy, one standard and one experimental new play to stretch the company's ability to handle new writing.
Amongst those new plays was one set in a Pear Orchard (the name of which I am ashamed to say I cannot recall) and The Pier by James Forsyth. Tom was very taken with the format of both. I - like most theatregoers of the period - disliked them because they had no beginning, middle and end. I was also unimpressed with some of the acting, a fact that Tom later brought back to haunt me...
After seeing the film The Wreak of the Mary Deare in 1959, I told Tom how good I thought the young actor playing Lieutenant Higgins was. 'Did you really' Tom replied. 'Well that was the young actor you thought was so bad in The Pier at the Bristol Old Vic, his name is Richard Harris'.
Peter O'Toole was another I disapproved of in The Pier. I like to think that there is a line in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead directed at me when a character says 'I want a play with a beginning, a middle and an end'.
As you can tell, Tom was indeed a fan of the Bristol Old Vic company at that time, especially its desire and courage to bring on new writers along with retaining the traditional values of the Theatre Royal in Kings Street.
Do you think we'll ever have another writer of his stature?
Is there another Tom Stoppard lurking out there in Theatre land? Probably. Each generation throws up a clutch of unique talents. I doubt however that there is one on the horizon that has the love of words and ability to write verbal gymnastics in the way that Tom did. Academics often analyse his plays to death, when in fact he is having fun playing with words and subjects.
Is there a fact about him people would be surprised to hear?
Tom loved sport particularly Cricket and Tennis, and at school often put these before study. The result of which was that when an examination was coming up, his brother Peter (a conscience at his elbow throughout his life) would have to nag him to spend that final weekend in study. The annoying thing, Peter told me, was that while he would have spent all term in hard study to pass the exam with good marks, Tom, having merely flicked through the pages the weekend before, would pass with flying colours.
