Ethics and the Moon

Abstract

Although Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead remains Stoppard’s most popular play, Jumpers is more brilliant and more substantial. Suppose that we are visiting the Old Vic once again, on an evening in February 1972, when this farcical and troubling vision of the not too distant future was first being presented by the National Theatre under Peter Wood’s direction. Before us is a bare stage, with a big screen as backdrop. When the houselights go down, we hear an off-stage master of ceremonies (played by Graham Crowden, the Player of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) introduce at some political victory-party ‘the much-missed, much-loved star of the musical stage, the incomparable, magnetic, Dorothy Moore’. A spotlight follows the singer (played by Diana Rigg) toward centre stage. Knowing Stoppard’s predilections, we might expect to hear something like an updated version of the ‘Twentieth Century Blues’ that ends Noel Coward’s Cavalcade: