[While] Tom Stoppard's Travesties focuses quite clearly on The Importance of Being Earnest, it may, judging by the early critical returns, serve even better as an example of "The Pitfalls of Being Witty." The play (which has as part of its donné the difficulties arising from a wartime production of Wilde's play in Zurich) has been hailed as a comic masterpiece, which it is, and as a vindication of James Joyce, which it is not. Centering his attention on the interaction of the mythologies of Art (represented by Joyce), Political Revolution (represented by Lenin), and Radical Individualism (represented by Tristan Tzara), Stoppard unveils the limitations of the twentieth century's most cherished systems of belief. (p. 228)

Carr, a minor official at the British consulate in Zurich, stands firmly at the center of Travesties' thematic structure…. By installing Carr, in many ways a flawed, petty man, as the central stage presence, Stoppard indicates that the nature of his mind and values is at least as much at issue as those of the three obviously important intellectual characters. (p. 230)

Far from detracting from his function as thematic touchstone, Carr's very limitations increase his suitability. He represents humanity in all its fallibility; he is exactly the type of person whom a truly inclusive modern mythology must be able to reach. From a Leninist perspective, Carr, however much controlled by his class situation, represents economically motivated modern man; the potential loss of twenty francs inspires him to initiate a court suit. From the Dadaist point of view he is an individual with theoretically unlimited idiosyncracies, however repressed. From a Joycean perspective, he provides something of the material of a Leopold Bloom. In theory, if not always in practice, each of the three movements has something to offer the Henry Carrs of the world.

In Travesties, however, Stoppard creates a Carr who remains stubbornly unredeemed despite his personal contact with the would-be messiahs of the various mythologies. Not that Stoppard therefore dismisses each system completely. Indeed, he carefully constructs the play in a manner which reflects each system through a twin perspective. From a "sympathetic" point of view, each major spokesman appears to have gotten the best of his adversaries. From the theoretical "objective" point of view (or from that of any opponent), however, each fails. In the midst of this constantly shifting tableau stands Carr, an occasionally inarticulate, but nonetheless implicitly eloquent, observer. (pp. 231-32)

Partially because Tzara has not attained the same historic prominence as Lenin and Joyce, critics have tended to dismiss him as a relatively unimportant character with a good deal of entertainment, but very little philosophical, value. Tzara, however, is the only character who seems capable of "seriously" considering both art and politics. Unlike both Joyce and Lenin, he visualizes a situation where the two can coexist, where "Artists and intellectuals will be the conscience of the revolution."… (p. 235)

While Carr actively rejects both Lenin (on patriotic grounds) and Joyce (for personal reasons), he seems content to let Tzara go without specific comment. Midway through their extended direct confrontation in act one, Tzara reduces Carr to invective very much like that which Tzara himself uses later against Joyce as part of a Dadaist onslaught…. [Carr] can actively reject Lenin in Lenin's own terms by attempting to interfere with his political objective; he can respond to Joyce in Joyce's own terms by rejecting his basic esthetic vision with a snort; he cannot reject or respond to Tzara.

Neither, however, can Carr accept him. If Tzara's myth comes closest to embodying the meaning of Carr's Zurich experience, it also fades quietly from historical memory. Carr's final reminiscence seems nearly dadaist in its implications but Carr himself is unable to make the connection: "I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. 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."… Art and politics are interchangeable and equally unattainable. Radical individualism has been lost to time.

Perhaps the curtain call of the New York production provides the best short summation of Travesties' central theme. Throughout the play actor John Wood made the transition from the role of Old Carr to that of Young Carr by removing his old bathrobe and altering his carriage. Following the play, Wood hobbles out wearing the bathrobe, bows and removes the bathrobe, only to reveal another bathrobe, and another Old Carr, underneath. Stoppard leaves us only with fallible, human Henry Carr, unregenerated even in memory. The twentieth century's most cherished myths have failed to effect a transformation. (pp. 235-36)