ABOUT THE PLAY

TRAVESTIES
by Tom Stoppard

It is historical fact that — coincidentally — the novelist James Joyce, Lenin (Russian revolutionary and brief leader of the new Soviet Empire), Tristan Tzara (founder of the anti-art Dada movement), and one Henry Carr, a British Consul were all in Zurich in 1917. Joyce roped Carr into a production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and later sued him. Stoppard takes this as his starting point and using the setting of a library interweaves dialogue from Wilde's play, Dada-ist poetry, and his own sparkling wordplay to create a very unreliable wander through Henry Carr's memory.

The play is a bizarre, multi-layered and very funny fantasy narrated by Carr in his old age. The characters move in and out of a pastiche of the mannered style of The Importance of Being Earnest, exchange dialogue in limerick form or in parody of Joyce’s novel Ulysses. They plot to return to St Petersburg, seek romantic conquests and debate the role of art in increasingly abusive terms – all while Carr seethes at Joyce for the loss of his trousers.

Travesties is a hilarious concoction of historical fact and fantasy, literary and theatrical pastiche, rumination on revolution and the role of the artist, all suffused with some of Stoppard’s most dazzling wit.