Moral debate, marital drama or murder-mystery? Tom Stoppard's extravagant Jumpers (1972) is all these and many more. But while Bill Alexander's revival, aided by Ruari Murchison's split-level design, captures the play's visual razzle-dazzle, it misses much of the pain and passion that inform even Stoppard's earliest work.
At its core the play shows philosophy professor George Moore struggling with a lecture arguing that moral sanctions obey an absolute, God-given law. Meanwhile, upstairs, George's songstress wife, Dotty, is suffering a breakdown partly induced by space exploration's demythologising of the moon. A plodding detective is also investigating the murder of a materialistic professor of logic who formed part of a pyramid of academic acrobats.
After 27 years, it's fascinating to see which of Stoppard's ideas stand up and which now look dated. The notion of moon landings causing moral mayhem is a non-runner, partly because lunar missions have stopped but also because from the start, with Buzz Aldrin practising Communion on the moon, they were given a spiritual dimension. Stoppard's fear of Britain sliding into totalitarianism under a loony left Radical-Liberal party also now seems a touch exaggerated. What he does pin down, with great acuity, are the dangers of living in a purely pragmatic world and the limitations of a philosophy based solely on logic: even the recent biography of the philosopher AJ Ayer implies that, whatever his many virtues, he suffered from emotional autism and had little room for art or music.
Stoppard's play, in short, is a moving defence of the irrational, the inexplicable and possibly even of God-given moral absolutes. But Malcolm Tierney's George, although he looks splendidly fraught, misses some of the role's urgent spiritual passion and fear of cuckoldry. Even Samantha Spiro's Dotty, which has vocal echoes of her recent performance as Barbara Windsor, rarely suggests the desperation of a woman in the throes of emotional crisis.
The unequivocal successes are Christopher Ravenscroft's smoothly lecherous vice-chancellor, Andy Hockley's showbiz-infatuated police inspector and Timothy Kightley's deeply philosophical caretaker. Stoppard's social comedy is all there; so too the acrobatics and the aerial striptease of Susan Monnox's flying secretary, which are dashingly done. But, while the production excellently conveys Stoppard's verbal and visual humour, it is less persuasive on his passion and his abhorrence of a moral vacuum.
