Stoppard's Jumpers: A Mystery Play

Stoppard's Jumpers: A Mystery Play LUCINA P. GABBARD TOM STOPPARD'S JUMPERS is a many-splendored mystery play - so many-splendored that it is, metaphorically, a kaleidoscope. Bright fragments of many forms and many themes make new configurations with each twist of the dial. The most obvious ingredients are rollicking comedy and metaphysics. This combination recalls the mystery plays of medieval times which mixed morality and Bible stories with humorous and grotesque details. Stopping there, however, would misrepresent and oversimplify the generic classification of Jumpers, for the kaleidoscope contains bits of many genres assembled in the overall design of a "whodunit." Applied to form, the mystery is not "whodunit?" but "whatisit?" Some critics call the playa farce, and it does employ many farcical techniques . It makes beautiful mischief with mistaken identity. George assumes that Dotty's casserole is made from his missing rabbit, Thumper. So he tells Crouch, the porter: "Do you realize she's in there now, eating him?") Crouch, thinking George refers to the murdered Professor McFee, replies: "You mean - raw?" Compounding Crouch's horror, George answers crossly: "No, ofcourse not! - cooked- with gravy and mashed potatoes" (p. 76). The play is alive with broad comic action. McFee's corpse swings in and out of sight on the back of the bedroom door. Nobody drops his pants, but Dotty drops her robe, revealing a lovely body naked from the thighs up. Traditionally, however, farce is devoid of profundity, whereas Jumpers is not. Stoppard's slapstick takes place in the midst of cosmic tragedy and metaphysical inquiry. Astronaut Oates has been abandoned on the moon, and George addresses 87 88 LUCINA P. GABBARD himself to the question, "Is God?" (p. 24). Moreover, the play ridicules man's institutions - education, justice, morality - thereby taking on the weight ofa satire. Intermingled with these ancient forms are all the cultural features of twentieth century drama. The two astronauts on the moon represent Space Age technology; their fight for the single berth on the crippled space capsule depicts the Darwinian commonplace of survival of the fittest. The image of Astronaut Oates "waving forlornly from the featureless wastes of the lunar landscape" (p. 22) objectifies man facing the existential void. Dotty's analyst is a Freudian. The Jumpers, flipflopping between political and philosophical roles while Archie calls the tune, suggest the Marxian masses controlled by society. The amorality of Archie and his acrobats is typical of the Absurdist's world which Richard Corrigan describes well: "There are no valuejudgments or distinctions in values in the world of the Absurd. In Adamov's Ping Pong, the aesthetic, economic, and philosophic implications of pinball machines are discussed with religious fervor. In Ionesco's Jack, or the Submission the whole action is to convince Jack to accept the family's chiefvalue: ~I love potatoes with bacon.'''2 Another example in Corrigan's elaboration might well have been George's analogy between McFee's beliefs about good and bad and "the rules of tennis without which Wimbledon Fortnight would be a complete shambles" (p. 48). Brechtian technique also contributes to this kaleidoscope. In his description of the set, Stoppard calls for a screen forming a backdrop for film and slide projections. But the farce, the satire, the contemporary milieu - even the Brechtian screen - are all elements of Absurdism; and to this accumulation, Stoppard adds his and the Absurdists' principal method - the use of concrete images to convey meaning.' In Endgame, Beckett places Nagg and Nell in giant garbage cans to represent the discarding ofold and useless parents. Stoppard makes a pyramid of acrobats out of the university's Philosophy Department, bodying forth the intellectual's mental gymnastics. The Coda, a full-fledged dream, adds still another Absurd ingredient. Other nondramatic literary forms also claim mention in Jumpers. Titles of novels and songs constitute the charades which are the basis of Dotty's relationship with George. Overt allusions to classic poets - Milton, Keats - mingle with covert references to modern masters like Eliot and Beckett. The tortoise and 'the hare recall an oft-told fable - as do Dotty's cries of "Wolfl" A large portion of the play, however , is devoted to George's preparations for the symposium. Thus...