Jumpers

by Tom Stoppard

Overview

Tom Stoppers's play "Jumpers" is both a high-spirited comedy and a serious attempt to debate the existence of a moral absolute, of metaphysical reality, of God. Michael Billington in "The Guardian" described the play succinctly: "The new Radical Liberal Party has made the ex-Minister of Agriculture Archbishop of Cantebury, British astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon, and spritely academics steal about London by night indulging in murderous gymnastics: this is the kind of manic, futuristic, topsy-turvy world in which Stoppard's dazzling new play is set. And if I add that the influences apparently include Wittgenstein, Magritte, the Goons, Robert Dhery, Joe Orton, and The Avengers, you will have some idea of the heady brew Stoppard has here concocted." The protagonist incude an aging Professor Of Moral Philosophy — trying to compose a lecture on "Man — Good, Bad or Indifferent" — while ignoring a corpse in the next room; his beautiful young wife, an ex-musical comedy Queen, lasciviously entertaining his university boss down the hall; her husband's specially trained hare, Thumpers; and a chorus of gymnasts, Jumpers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802160812
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Series:	Tom Stoppard
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, Travesties, and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia. His screen credits include Parade’s End, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, Empire of the Sun, and Anna Karenina.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Jumpers:

“The kind of gem that few playwrights other than Stoppard could have crafted: a freewheeling farce with a soulful, searing conscience.”—USA Today

“A daredevil extravaganza with amateur acrobats in the ballroom and a huge, insistent love for humanity in its addled soul. Part murder mystery, part academic satire, part cosmic meditation on the nature of goodness, this is also an old-time English sex farce with a silly streak as deep as its embrace is wide.”—Newsday

“Exuberantly surreal . . . A rare treat on Broadway: a comedy that inspires, indeed demands, intellectual engagement.”—Variety

“The wordplay and absurd twists of logic are endless. There is something dazzling about the way the play veers between academic and farcical.”—New York Daily News

“Stoppard’s high hurdle of a comedy [is] filled with dense philosophical discussion, impossibly clever quips, deliberately bad musical numbers and one dead gymnast.” —Miami Herald

“Stoppard makes mock of philosophers with the same vigor Molière showed in poking fun at doctors 350 years ago: a riot of paradox about the reality of goodness and the dangers of our technological world.”—New York Post

“Jumpers remains a major. . . piece of work by a major British playwright.” —Jacques Le Sourd, Journal News

“It’s Stoppard in Wonderland—a Wonderland in which his quicksilver brain is free to juggle with paradoxes and to conjure with logic in the manner of Lewis Carroll . . . An intellectual plum pudding.” —Peter Lewis, Daily Mail

“The new Radical Liberal Party has made the ex-Minister of Agriculture Archbishop of Canterbury, British astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon and sprightly academics steal about London by night indulging in murderous gymnastics: this is the kind of manic, futuristic, topsy-turvy world in which Stoppard’s dazzling play is set. And if I add that the influences apparently include Wittgenstein, Magritte, the Goons, Robert Dhery, Joe Orton and The Avengers, you will have some idea of the heady brew Stoppard has here concocted.” —Michael Billington, Guardian

“Don’t worry if you’re not up on your Keats or Milton, or for that matter your Plato or Wittgenstein. For all the intellectual namedropping, Jumpers . . . is ultimately less of a showoff demonstration of what Mr. Stoppard knows than a humble contemplation of what he and all humankind can never know.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

From the Publisher

"Jumpers is simply dazzling. It takes your breath away with its sheer exuberance of literacy, its cascade of words and conspicuous display of intellect. It is also extraordinarily funny. Jumpes is one of the wittiest and most stimulating plays of the last decade or so." -- The New York Times

Clive Barnes

"It's Stoppard in Wonderland -- a Wonderland in which his quicksilver brain is free to juggle with paradoxes and to conjure with logic in the manner of Lewis Carroll... An intellectual plum pudding." -- The Daily Mail

Peter Lewis