TRAVESTIES


Tom Stoppard is a playwright with a fertile imagination and daring, which has been proven repeatedly by his various plays. Roundabout Theatre Company’s current revival of Stoppard’s “Travesties” illustrates his ingenuity anew. This mounting, which originated at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London and is being presented by Roundabout in association with Chocolate Factory Productions and Sonia Friedman Productions, offers audiences a rollicking good time with an intellectual perspective wrapped in theater of the absurd.

Stoppard cleverly mixes riffs on history, culture, prominent figures and sex. He jumps back and forth between time frames-- 1917 and some 50 years later. There are serious observations and playful ones, with much hilarity involved and accented under the broad direction by Patrick Marber. Tim Hatley’s set design consists mainly of a huge, cluttered multi-tiered library within the walls of which the hell-raising occurs.

The take-off point is Zurich, 1917, and the play is framed via the memory of Henry Carr, a British consul played by the remarkable Tom Hollander. We see him in his dotage struggling to recall events during the year when Vladimir Lenin (Dan Butler), James Joyce (Peter McDonald) and Tristan Tzara (Seth Numrich) were in Zurich at the same time. When time flips back we see Carr as a young man, and by the end of the play we see him elderly again, touchingly struggling to remember the past as he attempts to dispense wisdom.

Stoppard is a master at interweaving his characters, much to our amusement, and he has poet Tzara, the Dadist in the mix, giving an enjoyably over-the-top performance during which he joyfully proclaims “Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.” Stoppard has another ploy, taking off on Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” by inserting two women into the mayhem--the competing Cecily, delightfully played with an abundance of versatile talent by Sara Topham, and Gwendolen, exuberantly portrayed by the talented Scarlett Strallen.

It would be a mistake to think of Stoppard as only highbrow. How else would one explain his reaching back into America’s vaudeville age to the popular act of Gallagher and Shean and their signature format of singing “Good Morning, Mr. Gallagher, Good Morning, Mister Shean.” In a highlighted, entertaining segment to the tune of their trademark tune Stoppard inserts a musical face-off between Cecily and Gwendolen. They’re so good they could take their show on the road.

The historical and literary frolicking doesn’t mask the underlying seriousness of Stoppard’s pointing to Lenin’s hope for a better society, the waste of lives in World War I and the failure of it to end all wars. Culture is a major force meant to elevate humankind and give voice to genius. Hollander does a very special job of tying all together with sensitivity along with his comedy in the character of Carr. Others in the cast contributing importantly include Opal Alladin as Lenin’s wife and Patrick Kerr as the suave Bennett, Carr’s servant, who repeatedly delivers the morning papers and recites the important, generally depressing news of the day. Sound familiar?

I did mention sex, best epitomized by a moment in which Gwendolen, seated at a table, gives a short orgasmic chirp, and suddenly out pops Tzara from under the table with a mischievous look of satisfaction and wipes his mouth as he exits the stage. In Stoppard’s “Travesties” you never know what to expect except a challenging good time. At the American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street. Phone: 212-719-1300. Reviewed April 27, 2018.




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