Artist Descending a Staircase is Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

's 1972 radio play that centers around a murder mystery involving an artist who dies from falling down a set of stairs . The play is a humorous exploration of the meaning and purpose of art. The title alludes to Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

's painting Nude Descending a Staircase

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

-External links:* at the Philadelphia Museum of Art* from Life magazine...

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Plot

The play opens with the sound of the artist, Donner, falling down the stairs. The other two roommates, Martello and Beauchamp, enter and find their 50 year old friend at the bottom of the staircase. Beauchamp, an artist whose focus is on the sounds of daily life, examines a recording of the sounds of Donner's fall. The pair decides that a murderer must have awakened Donner from his sleep and then pushed him down the stairs to his death. Martello and Beauchamp accuse each other of the crime. The following scenes flash back to several different years at least 50 years in the past. This part of the play follows the three artists and their interactions with a blind woman named Sophie. The end of the play returns to the present. Martello and Beauchamp are unable to solve the mystery, but Stoppard alerts the audience to the truth. When the audience witnesses a fly buzzing around the studio and Beauchamp's attempts to swat it, they realize that Donner must have fallen down the stairs in pursuit of the fly. The play ends with Beauchamp recording over the sounds of Donner's death.

Theatrical Production

A stage adaptation, written by Stoppard, was first performed at the R.J. Reynolds Theatre, on the Duke University Campus, in 1989. It was followed by a Broadway production, at the Helen Hayes Theater. It featured the following cast:

• Michael Cumpsty - Young Beauchamp
• Jim Fyfe - Young Martello
• Harold Gould - Beauchamp
• John McMartin - Donner
• Stephanie Roth - Sophie
• Paxton Whitehead - Martello
• Michael Winther - Young Donner

The production team was the following:

• Director - Tim Luscombe
• Assistant Director - Nicholas de Wolff
• Scenic Design - Tony Straiges
• Costume Design - Joseph G. Aulisi
• Lighting Design - Tharon Musser
• Sound Design - Tom Morse

The Play has been re-staged for the first time in twenty years; running from the 1st to the 31st of December at the Old Red Lion Theatre

Old Red Lion Theatre

The Old Red Lion Theatre is a fringe theatre, situated above a pub at The Angel, in the London Borough of Islington.It was founded in 1948 as the Old Red Lion Theatre Club.-Construction:...

 in Islington with the following cast

• Jeremy Child
• Olivia Darnley
• Ryan Gage
• Max Irons
• Edward Petherbridge
• Alex Robertson
• David Weston
  David Weston (actor)
  David Weston is an English actor, director and author. Since graduating from RADA in 1961 he has acted in numerous film, television and stage productions, including twenty-seven plays in Shakespeare's canon. With Michael Croft he was a founder member of the National Youth Theatre...