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fiona_gradyTom Stoppard's play "Travesties" is complex and erudite, unabashedly witty and both funny and sad; it is inventively theatrical, yet assuredly literary; in short, it is a masterpiece.
James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin are at the Zurich Public Library in the fatal year of 1917. When not busy writing "Ulysses", Joyce is staging an amateur production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"; one of the diplomats at the British Consulate is playing Algernon. At the end of the run, a lengthy lawsuit ensues between James Joyce and the diplomat Henry Carr over the cost of bespoke trousers and sold tickets. Amazingly, all of the above are historical facts. Stoppard took the facts, tossed them in a hat in a true Dada fashion, mixed in the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, sprinkled it with limericks and Lenin's speeches and writings, and - voila! - one of the most brilliant plays in the English language was born.
"Travesties" is notoriously difficult to stage: the pace is diabolically fast, the onslaught of allusions assumes an intellectual audience, the dialogue is both hilarious and meaningful, and everything depends on the actors and their delivery. This production was directed by Nick Sandys, a fantastic actor and, also and importantly, a renown fight director. He also holds a Masters Degree in English Lit from Cambridge University. That is why, perhaps, every scene was choreographed with a precision of a ballet, and every word delivered a punch.
In 1917, revolutions are bursting all over the place: Joyce is writing "Ulysses", that most important book of modernist literature, Tristan Tzara and friends launch Dada, an artistic movement that declares itself to be anti-art. In the First Act of "Travesties", there is a lively debate about definition of art and a place of artist in society. It is easy to feel smug, getting every joke and every literary and artistic reference, and easy to laugh at the burlesque antics on the stage.
In Act Two, however, another revolutionary takes center stage. Lenin, packing in a hurry to catch a train to Russia, is planning a little revolution of his own. He is accompanied by his devoted sidekick Nadia, (played by an actress who is way too attractive to represent Krupskaya). Every word that Lenin utters on stage was actually written by Lenin himself, every word that Nadia says is taken directly from her writings about Lenin. Within the context of the play, almost everything also refers to art. American audience is laughing uproariously at Nadia's sentimental reminiscences about "Ilych's" tastes in art and music. "He enjoyed going to the music hall... he laughed at the clowns...he respected Tolstoy's traditional values.." I find myself suddenly elated at the thought that it is possible to present Lenin in a theater as somebody completely ridiculous, and that people can laugh their heads off at the sheer pompousness of his banality when Nadia confides that "the new art seemed somehow alien and incomprehensible to him" or when Stoppard's Lenin pompously declares: "Today, literature must become party literature!".
But what of that "party literature"? To Lenin, even Mayakovsky's poetry is "all nonsense and stupidity". And apparently the party line alone is not enough, as there comes a declaration that "Mayakovsky should be whipped for his Futurism". It is no longer funny because the poetry that Lenin invented was really easy to understand....
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin are at the Zurich Public Library in the fatal year of 1917. When not busy writing "Ulysses", Joyce is staging an amateur production of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"; one of the diplomats at the British Consulate is playing Algernon. At the end of the run, a lengthy lawsuit ensues between James Joyce and the diplomat Henry Carr over the cost of bespoke trousers and sold tickets. Amazingly, all of the above are historical facts. Stoppard took the facts, tossed them in a hat in a true Dada fashion, mixed in the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, sprinkled it with limericks and Lenin's speeches and writings, and - voila! - one of the most brilliant plays in the English language was born.
"Travesties" is notoriously difficult to stage: the pace is diabolically fast, the onslaught of allusions assumes an intellectual audience, the dialogue is both hilarious and meaningful, and everything depends on the actors and their delivery. This production was directed by Nick Sandys, a fantastic actor and, also and importantly, a renown fight director. He also holds a Masters Degree in English Lit from Cambridge University. That is why, perhaps, every scene was choreographed with a precision of a ballet, and every word delivered a punch.
In 1917, revolutions are bursting all over the place: Joyce is writing "Ulysses", that most important book of modernist literature, Tristan Tzara and friends launch Dada, an artistic movement that declares itself to be anti-art. In the First Act of "Travesties", there is a lively debate about definition of art and a place of artist in society. It is easy to feel smug, getting every joke and every literary and artistic reference, and easy to laugh at the burlesque antics on the stage.
In Act Two, however, another revolutionary takes center stage. Lenin, packing in a hurry to catch a train to Russia, is planning a little revolution of his own. He is accompanied by his devoted sidekick Nadia, (played by an actress who is way too attractive to represent Krupskaya). Every word that Lenin utters on stage was actually written by Lenin himself, every word that Nadia says is taken directly from her writings about Lenin. Within the context of the play, almost everything also refers to art. American audience is laughing uproariously at Nadia's sentimental reminiscences about "Ilych's" tastes in art and music. "He enjoyed going to the music hall... he laughed at the clowns...he respected Tolstoy's traditional values.." I find myself suddenly elated at the thought that it is possible to present Lenin in a theater as somebody completely ridiculous, and that people can laugh their heads off at the sheer pompousness of his banality when Nadia confides that "the new art seemed somehow alien and incomprehensible to him" or when Stoppard's Lenin pompously declares: "Today, literature must become party literature!".
But what of that "party literature"? To Lenin, even Mayakovsky's poetry is "all nonsense and stupidity". And apparently the party line alone is not enough, as there comes a declaration that "Mayakovsky should be whipped for his Futurism". It is no longer funny because the poetry that Lenin invented was really easy to understand....
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
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