Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. Besides his work for the theatre, he began writing plays for radio and television in 1963. Among the eighteen plays Tom Stoppard wrote, “Night and Day” is one of the best plays of our times although much criticized. It is Stoppard’s best drama and a real improvement over his two preceding “serious” plays, “Travesties” and “Jumpers”.
“Night and Day” is about British and international correspondents in Africa to cover an uprising revolution, about love and death, and about Journalism as a pillar of free society. In this play the characters are emotionally engaged. The action takes place in an African state called Kambawe, which is dictatorially ruled by “President” Mageeba. When Mageeba’s regime was threatened by rebels, Dick Wagner and Jacob Milne (two newsmen) gather at Geoffrey Carson’s house, a British mine owner. The journalists are central to the “Night and Day” play, which is concerned with the responsibility of journalism and a free press. They met at Carson’s house, because they were eager to cover the uprising in Kambawe (once a British colony), and Carson had a Telex machine and close connections to dictator Mageeba.
The unifying character is Carson’s wife Ruth, who has a complicated and vulnerable personality, is frustrated, fears madness, and has retired prematurely from an active life. She had an affair with Wagner in a London hotel. While waiting for war to break out, the journalists conduct debates on various topics: free expression and free press, the nature of British trade unions, and British Colonial experience. All the characters, including the tyrannical ruler Mageeba, are brought into the debate.
As major questions about the role of the press arise into the debate, the play is at its most intensive moment. Milne’s idealistic notion of the press is a great deal of arguing with Wagner about the value and place of journalism and the limits on the freedom of a corporate-run paper. The main question is about the role of journalists. If one of them dies in action, is he a hero giving his life for truth or for a modest salary received from a profitable newspaper? Richard Wagner, the cynical reporter, hopes to use Geoffrey Carson’s ties with Kambawe’s dictator and the opposing rebel leader to his advantage.
Ruth, the enigmatic and romantic character, has a focal role in the play. She is right when she says: “I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand”. I sympathize with Jacob Milne, who was machine-gunned to death–one of the newsmen who risk their lives to provide the public with the truth about the revolution in Africa– while Carson has his business interests. Milne, an idealistic journalist, was the only non-game player and suffered the most tragic fate off all characters. He speaks with Stoppard’s tone of voice reflecting his own philosophy: “But in Night and Day, certainly in Jacob Milne’s monologue about newspapers, he does speak for me. No question. But when the African dictator puts in his point of view about the relativity of the freedom, that also makes sense”. (An interview with Tom Stoppard, by Nancy Shields Hardin; Tom Stoppard, Contemporary Literature: Vol. 22, No. 2, p. 159)
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