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• A four-way pun hits the stage with 'Travesties' A four-way pun hits the stage with 'Travesties' 'Travesties" is only the third full-length play British playwright Tom Stoppard wrote. It’s become one of his best known. With Irish writer James Joyce, Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and French poet Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada, as its main characters -- along with a minor British diplomat named Henry Carr -- "Travesties" is a wild flight of ideas about art and politics; puns; and literary and theatrical allusions, chiefly to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." The play was first produced at the Aldwych Theater in London in 1974. It arrived on Broadway in 1975 and then, later that year, opened at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where it ran in rotating repertory with "The Importance of Being Earnest," using many of the same actors in both productions. It was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1993 using a script Stoppard revised for that production which has since become the standard version. "He wrote it after 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' and ‘Jumpers.’ They are all three plays about exiles," said Gregory Boyd, artistic director of the Alley Theater in Houston, who is directing "Travesties” for the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where it began performances last night. Press opening is tonight at 8. "In this play," Boyd said by telephone from an apartment in Williamstown where he was staying during the rehearsal period, "the exiles are a revolutionary and two revolutionary artists, choosing to live in a place [Zurich, Switzerland during World War I] that is not the war place. One of the issues Stoppard looks at in this play is how art or a political position is justifiable in relationship to a war. "[Stoppard] said he was trying to marry a serious play of ideas with a comedy of high farce. "Every inch of it is packed with his love of theater and language." That packing begins with the title, "Travesties," a "four-way pun," Boyd said, “that includes intellectual debate and a pie fight. "In the play, each moment is a moment that sets up a moment that is knocked down later." Boyd directed "Travesties" four years ago at the Alley. He is still, he says, discovering new things in it. "Travesties" is based on the little-known historical fact that Lenin, Joyce and Tsara were all in Zurich at the same time; so was Carr. They never met but Stoppard poses a situation in which they repeatedly intersect. The play shifts in time between World War I Zurich and a later time in which an older Carr is filtering what seem to be disjointed events through the prism of his memory. On the printed page, "Travesties" is a dense play. On stage, in rehearsal, Boyd says, the play is quite something else. Despite its often arcane literary, artistic, philosophical, and theatrical references, "Travesties" works, Boyd believes, for audiences who have limited -- or no -- knowledge about any of the play's characters or the political or artistic movements they represent. "Any play," Boyd said, "has to contain in it the seeds of its own understanding. It has to present a beginning, a middle and an end. "It also has to present a full range of asterisked lines and history. As director, you have to do the work so you understand it and the actors understand it so that, together, you produce something that will encourage people to come along. "This is a great big wind-up toy of a play and fun to watch even if you're not a comp lit major." Meeting the play's challenges begins, Boyd said, with the casting. His cast here includes Stephen Spinella as James Joyce, Michael Stuhlbarg as Tristan Tzara, Gregor Paslawsky as Lenin and David Garrison as Henry Carr -- hardly names that will ring bells with audiences (with the possible exception of Spinella) -- but, Boyd said, accomplished actors all. "We've done extremely well," he said. "The play is written for virtuosos and these [and the others in the cast] are that.” In imagining "Travesties" for Williamstown, Boyd and his designers -- Neil Patel, sets; Judith Dolan, costumes; Rui Rita, lights -- went to Stoppard's own sources: Dadaist artists, Oscar Wilde’s "The Importance of Being Earnest," the film “10 Days That Shook the World,” Monty Python. "I hope it will be fun to be in the room with it," Boyd said. "You feel the air inside the room makes you feel smarter, more buoyant in the mind as the thoughts go by you. It's very bracing. "It's not a parking lot play -- something you’ll forget by the time you get to your car. "It's not like any other play I’ve ever done." "Travesties" runs through Aug. 17 on the Williamstown Theatre Festival Main Stage. Performances are Tuesday through Friday evenings at 8, Saturday evenings at 8:30, Thursday afternoons at 3, Saturday afternoons at 4, and Sunday afternoons at 2. Ticket information is available by phoning 597-3400. |
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