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Travesties

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Tom Stoppard was clearly showing off when he wrote "Travasties". In his research he cleverly discovered that V.I. Lenin, James Joyce (then young and in the midst of writing Ulysses), and Tristan Tzara, one of the leaders of the dadist movement, were living in Zurich simultaneously. Teamed up with Gwendolen and Cecily, two characters from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest", and Henry Carr, a former member of the British Counsular Service, Stoppard wrote a theoretical account of their interactions in 1917. The result is "Travasties", a wildly intelligent and humorous play.

The play is set in the faulty memory of Henry Carr as he reminices about his experiences in Zurich (yes, he was there too) during "The Great War". As it was, Henry Carr, a non-fictional historical figure, played the role of Algernon in "The Importance of Being Ernest" in a play company owned by James Joyce. When James Joyce refused to reimburse Carr for the few hundred pounds he spent on his trousers in his overzealous attempt to "become" Algernon, a lawsuit ensued, which Joyce ultimately won. Indeed, Joyce indeed attained total victory by writing Carr into Ulysses as a drunken soldier. So, as one might imagine, the play is full of small stabs at James Joyce, namely by the elder Carr (at present during the play it is 1972).

The integration of Lenin and his wife, as well as Cecily, Gwendolen and Tzara, is fantastic and extremely immaginative, and the experience would, no doubt, be enhanced by first reading all of the works alluded to in the play.

Despite Tom Stoppard's obvious attempt to promote his own genius in "Travasties", the outcome is so fantastic, so interesting, and so, honestly, funny, that all is forgiven. Travasties is 71 pages long, and a reasonably quick read... spend one afternoon curled up with it, see it if you can, and muse over the connections (but not too loudly with the "aha!"s) you find... and I hate to end a review so blandly, but enjoy.

A witty and comic two-act play involving characters from history: Lenin, the leader of the Russian Communist Revolution; James Joyce, an Irish poet; Tristan Tzara, the Romanian founder of Dada; and Henry Carr, a man who had associations with Joyce. The play is told from Carr's point of view when he is an old man, and because memory often fails him in his old age, he has to retell certain parts, meaning that we get to see different reenactments of the same scene. Although it may sound repetitive, it not in the least dull, as each retelling is a little bit different. We see Carr's confusion as he struggles to retell the past correctly. Highly amusing. It helps to have some historical knowledge of Stoppard's characters in order to find the humor in the play.

This is probably my favorite Stoppard play. Everything about it is raised to such a level of excellence that it's difficult to imagine how it can be surpassed.

Stoppard showcases his linguistic talents at their most dazzling and expects the reader to keep up intellectually. Not to sound daunting, but in order to enjoy "Travesties" properly, it helps to know some rudimentary German, French, and Russian; be well familiar with Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and James Joyce's "Ulysses"; and also to have a good factual knowledge of the Great War and the Great October Revolution. If you do not have this background knowledge, you risk missing out on most of Stoppard's witty insight and leaving the theatre/closing the book confused and disappointed.

The most important thing to remember about Travesties is that it is essentially Stoppard arguing with himself. This really shines through in his "derailed" scenes, where the characters have to abort a scene half-way through because it's obviously going in a wrong direction. Basically, it starts out with the characters being themselves, but as it progresses, one can see that they are simply two sides of Stoppard's own mind speaking to the audience through masks. And then it's as if the author remembers to keep his distance from the audience and steps back into the shadows. The effect is rather mystical; it's as if we are granted a brief glimpse beyond the fabric of what we take to be reality. What remains unclear is whether we are now looking into the "true" reality or yet another scene setting.

In short, buy the book, read it outloud, amuse yourself, alarm your neighbors.

Zurich 1917, a marvellous subject. The meeting point of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries on one side, and of the new « revolutionary » artists, be they James Joyce and the stream of consciousness writers, or Tristan Tzara and the Dada movement.

The first interest of the play is to situate the dynamic of each revolutionary movement very well. Lenin is the figurehead of the revolutionary politicians, James Joyce and Tzara of the modern literature movements.

Then Stoppard makes them meet. In Zurich it is more or less an artificial meeting though they share most of their ideas (the files that are unknowingly exchanged at the beginning and exchanged back at the end show how identical their ideas are) and yet they have styles, general postures that make them unable to have a real dialogue.

Tom Stoppard goes even further by tracing along Lenin's positions on art. He shows the perfect contradiction contained - as Walt Whitman would say - by the man. On one side (Tolstoy), he understands that a work of art is a reflection (hence not a purely identical image) of social contradictions and therefore of society, and also a reflection of the contradictory artist (all artists contain contradictions) and his contradictory position in society (hence in the social contradictions of this society). On the other side, once in power, he condemns, at first, then wavers on the subject, Mayakovsky and the Futurist mocement, and definitely considers intellectuals as bourgeois individualists. But the artists of 1917 represent exactly a similar contradiction between the absolutely nihilistic approach of the Dada movement, and the mentally realistic movement represented by James Joyce. The former rejects all heritage. The latter rearranges the full heritage within a modern man's consciousness, hence within a revolutionary or disturbing consciousness.

The play is at times funny, at times realistic, at times dramatic, according to the points of view, but the essential one of these is the recollections two (minor) characters have of the period sixty years later. We are forced to accept that historical perspective : what it was then and what we can do of it now.

The conclusion of the play is typical perpetual movement, here perpetual syllogism : « Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary... I forget the third thing. » Unfinished of course, like any historical achievement. History is always unfinished, in spite of Marx's dream of a contradiction-free communist society. This is the biggest sham of western philosophy ever dreamed of by a man of the amplitude and intensity of Karl Marx. You can be a genius but reality is more real than philosophy. The proof, as Marx liked to say, of the pudding is in my eating it. Full stop. Period.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Stoppard has a talent for the madcap, but we don't get too much of it these days. Why, I can't say. "Travesties" blew people away when it appeared more than twenty years ago. It is one of the fastest plays of the century, simply flying by as a sit-down read or in production. He has slowed considerably, in more ways than one. There was a time there when every single play of his was declared a work of genius, but now we can see more objectively that this is probably his best. His singular use of language is on display here as is his electrifying wit. Wilde comes to mind, but Stoppard lacks his anger and therefore his capacity for delivering fatal blows. Stoppard is, in essence, a 'happy' playwright, so one doesn't get that Wildean archness. We see traces of Wilde in Coward and Pinter, perhaps even in the American Albee. Stoppard, however, is not by birth an Englishman and therefore brings ideas to his work that our Anglo-culture often avoids. A conservative, Stoppard knows first-hand the terrors of Eastern European tyranny and has not shopped in the fashionably Marxist side of town that David Hare, for example, prefers. He's not out to denounce anything other than the commonplace.

i spent over 2 months working as assistant director of this play and it took my the entire course of which to believe that i had understood all of the jokes. Of course i then went on to read more of Joyce and Wilde and the play took on whole new volumes of meaning. Its that complex. Another review advised to curl up with it for an afternoon...fun, perhaps, but not nearly as rewarding as it could be having done the background needed to get this play. "Halfway to Finland Station with V.I. Lenin" seriosly folks, how many of us would get that reference off the bat? still, diffilculty aside, this play is so amazing and funny that one can spend the entire time chuckling with only the most cursorary of readings/viewings. There is an absolutly fantastic scene done entirely in limerick form where Stoppard stretches his poetic legs (which prove to be quite well muscled). Acadamians and ignoramouses alike, READ IT! IT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY!

Stoppard's comedy for intellectuals featuring War Time Zurich to where heavy-weight intellectuals in Europe fled and incubated their respective ideals and beliefs. The play featured personal conflict between a minor figure, player Henry Carr and prominent writer and businessman James Joyce. With the Oscar Wilde's play "The importance of Being Ernest" played both on stage and in real life Zurich, thus involving the Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin and painter/artist Tzara. The former's manifesto was presented with rather lengthy soliloquy, a bit didactic at times, but not without its comic elements. The latter's anti-rationalist Dadaism was portrayed in a most funny way with mistaken identity directly from Wilde's play. It would be interesting to note that Wilde's Importance was actually inspired by Shakespeare's play the Comedy of Errors.

Stoppard however has not exhausted most prominent intellectuals then in Zurich. In particular Carl Jung. Joyce was familiar with Jung who later treated, unsuccessful, the schizophrenia of Joyce's daughter (later institutionalized for life). Jung had earlier written a hostile analysis of Ulysses, and Joyce was left bitter at Jung's analysis of his daughter. He paid back in Finnegans Wake, joking with Jung's concepts of Animus and Anima. Incidentally Joyce wrote Carr as a drunken soldier in Ulysses, a warning for common folks who might be tempted to argue with great writers!

A highly readable comedy of Stoppard.