"Travesties" at Roundabout Theatre Company

Roundabout photo by Joan Marcus

It's no surprise to anyone around here that I like Tom Stoppard plays a lot. And Travesties is one of my personal favorites. So a chance to see the Broadway revival at Roundabout was one of the main excuses for our recent venture to New York City. One of the things I like about the play is that it stands up to a variety of stagings. The first I saw, years ago, was a really stripped-down version at Actor's Ensemble of Berkeley that really let the audience focus on Stoppard's words more than the production details. This Broadway production is quite the opposite, but it works, too.

The Play

Among the things I love about Travesties is that it might be the quintessential Stoppard play: witty dialog, interesting characters drawn from actual people, intellectual topics, and a realization as you go that things are not what you thought they were.

The central character in the play is Henry Carr, an Englishman who served in The Great War, getting injured and ending up in Zurich for the duration. While much of the play takes place in Zurich in 1917, we also see Carr as an older man, looking back on those "great days." Carr may be one of my favorite unreliable narrators of his own life in theater (director Patrick Marber calls Travesties "a misremembered memory play" and "A memory play remembered by an amnesiac."). While in Zurich, Carr crosses paths with the writer James Joyce, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and Dadaist Tristan Tzara. It's a colorful cast of characters, supplemented by riffs and references to Shaw's The Importance of Being Earnest.

It's hard to give a really meaningful, short summary of the play, so I won't even try here. Suffice it to say that as the characters meet and interact in various locations in Zurich, there is ample opportunity for Stoppard to play with the people, their language, and our expectations. Add in a particularly well-informed butler, a flirtatious librarian, and some other pretensions, and you have the ingredients for a classic Stoppard comedy.

The Production

We've seen a number of Roundabout productions in recent years and been generally pleased with all of them. Travesties was no exception. The set design is pretty straightforward, allowing all the scenes to take place in the same space, without requiring set changes. Ultimately, it's all taking place in Carr's head, so the fact that it's a single, jumbled, untidy space that serves as home, library, cafe, and wherever else it needs to be at the moment is fine. Lighting and costumes are quite effective, too.

But the acting is where the rubber really hits the road. The key is Tom Hollander as Carr. He manages to morph quite deftly from the aging, forgetful Carr into his youthful, wartime self. The plasticity of his face and his body movements are really quite stunning and effective. And Carr is the key to the whole enterprise. The surrounding characters manage to be persuasive while resisting the temptation to fly over the top. Tzara, in particular, almost begs to be ridiculous, but Marber doesn't let actor Seth Numrich get out of hand. Same with Peter McDonald as Joyce and Dan Butler as Lenin. Any of those roles could descend into parody, but Marber keeps everyone to a relatively ordered level of insanity.

I particularly appreciated the musical riffs that make some of the scenes into little tableaux from a kind of Vaudevillian, music-hall style melodrama featuring Cecily (Sara Topham) and Gwendolyn (Scarlett Strallen)--very charming, very Earnest. And the droll butler Bennett (Patrick Kerr) is quite wonderful.

I could go on, but suffice it to say it's wonderful interpretation of the play, neatly and efficiently directed and designed.

Bottom Line

I liked it a lot. Go see it.

OK, that's a bit simplistic, but really, it is a lovely rendition of one of my favorite plays by my favorite playwright--what did you think I was going to say?

Sadly, the show closed last weekend. I'm glad we got to see it.