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Travesties | Introduction

When Travesties appeared on the London stage in 1974, it soon reinforced Tom Stoppard's reputation as one of the twentieth century's most innovative and clever playwrights. The play focuses on the fictional meeting of three important revolutionary figures in Zurich in 1917: the communist leader Lenin, the dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and the modernist author James Joyce. Henry Carr, who in real life knew Joyce, relates the trio's interactions through his unreliable memory. The play takes the form of a witty farce as it showcases, through comic wordplay, the political and philosophical point of view of these three men, who all had a profound influence on their times. Humorous complications spring from misunderstandings, mistaken identity, and plot twists that Stoppard borrows from Oscar Wilde's farcical masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. As Stoppard cleverly juxtaposes his three central figures' theories on Marxism, dadaism, and modernism, he addresses complex questions on the nature and function of politics and art and the role of the artist. Anne Wright, in her article on Stoppard for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, suggests that Travesties, along with his other plays, proves Stoppard to be "a skilled craftsman, handling with great dexterity and precision plots of extreme ingenuity and intricacy."

Travesties Summary

Most of the action in Travesties lakes place in Zurich in 1917. during World War I, and focuses on three revolutionaries: the communist leader Lenin, the dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and the modernist writer James Joyce. Henry Carr, a minor British official, relates the trio's actions and dialogue through his memories of that time period. Carr claims that he met Lenin at the Zurich library and Tzara and Joyce during a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The play is set in two locations: the Zurich Public Library, where the principle characters interact, and Carr's apartment in Zurich, where the now-elderly man recalls the past.

The dialogue focuses on the revolutionaries' politics and philosophies at a turning point in each man's life: Joyce's writing of his novel Ulysses, published in 1922; Tzara's creation of the principles of dada, a nihilistic movement in art and literature; and Lenin's decision to journey back to Russia to take part in the Russian Revolution.

The play opens at the library as Gwen, Carr's younger sister, sits with Joyce, transcribing an early draft of what will become Ulysses. Lenin and Tzara are also present and writing. When Tzara finishes, he cuts up his paper "word by word," places the pieces into his hat, dumps them on the table, and begins randomly arranging them into nonsensical sentences, which he then reads. Joyce reads, from his manuscript, sentences that also appear to be... » Complete Travesties Summary