Revisit the playwright’s biggest hits from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1966 to 2006’s Rock’n’Roll, following the announcement of a new Stoppard play that Nick Hytner will direct as his last National Theatre production as artistic director
Main image: Adrain Scarborough and Simon Russell Beale appear in a National Theatre production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1995 Photograph: Robbie Jack - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Sat 22 Mar 2014 08.00 GMT First published on Sat 22 Mar 2014 08.00 GMT
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist riff on Shakespeare's Hamlet, made Tom Stoppard's name at the 1966 Edinburgh Fringe. Adrian Scarborough and Simon Russell Beale square up in the 1995 National Theatre production.
Diana Rigg rehearsing for Stoppard's Jumpers at the Old Vic in 1972. Rigg played Dottie, the ex-performer wife of a philosophy professor of (Michael Horden).
Robert Powell in 1975's Travesties, an elderly man's reminiscences of first world war Zurich, where he met James Joyce as he wrote Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dadaism, and Lenin in the run-up up to the Russian Revolution.
Actor Julian Bleach and the violinist Eugene Lee in a 2010 production of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a critique of Soviet clampdowns on dissidence, which Stoppard wrote alongside André Previn's score for full orchestra in 1977.
Felicity Kendal in 1982's The Real Thing, the first of four Stoppard plays she starred in – the pair's close professional relationship developed into a personal one.
Arcadia (1992) featured Felicity Kendall, Bill Nighy, Harriet Walter and a young Rufus Sewell in its original cast. Here, the playwright's son Ed stars opposite Neil Pearson in the successful 2009 revival.
Stephen Dillane and Douglas Henshall in Shipwreck, the middle third of The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard's 2002 play trilogy, also at the National Theatre.
Sinead Cusack and Alice Eve in the 2006 Royal Court and West End smash, Rock'n'Roll, Stoppard's last original stage play – until now. Photograph: Elliott Franks/WireImage/Getty Images Share on FacebookShare on Twitter