Jumpers

Jumpers is a play by Tom Stoppard which was first performed in 1972. It explores and satirises the field of academic philosophy, likening it to a less-than skilful competitive gymnastics display. Jumpers raises questions such as "What do we know?" and "Where do values come from?" It is set in an alternative reality where some British astronauts have landed on the moon and "Radical Liberals" (read pragmatists and relativists) have taken over the British government (the play seems to suggest that pragmatists and relativists would be immoral: Archie says that murder is not wrong, merely "antisocial"). It was inspired by the notion that a manned moon landing would ruin the moon as a poetic trope and possibly lead to a collapse of moral values.

George Moore is a faded and slightly foolish philosophy professor employed at a university whose slick, exercise-mad Vice-Chancellor Archie Jumper forces a tumbling and leaping curriculum on the faculty. One such flipping prof, McFee, is shot dead in the cabaret chaos of the opening scene, setting off a suddenly very urgent philosophical duel on the moral nature of man. Caught in between is Dotty, George's disturbed wife and Archie's "patient." Dotty, a former student of George's, ended a semi-successful stage career when the sight of astronauts on the moon unhinged her sanity. According to Dotty, the conquering of the moon revealed the human race—once scientifically and spiritually the center of the universe—as "little, local."

The play was first performed by the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic Theatre, London on 2 February 1972 with Michael Hordern and Diana Rigg in the leading roles of George and Dorothy. Peter Wood directed the original production and Carl Toms designed its sets and costumes.

The play premiered on Broadway on April 22, 1974, at the Billy Rose Theatre and closed on June 1, 1974, after 48 performances. Directed again by Peter Wood, it featured Brian Bedford and Jill Clayburgh. Bedford won the Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Performance.

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