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Oxfordprospect |
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15 December 2010
Tom Stoppard’s TRAVESTIES,
"Oxford Theatre Guild, Simpkins Lee Theatre. "
By: A theatre review by Julia Gasper Whatever else you are doing between now and next Saturday, drop it and ring Ox. 305305 immediately to book for TRAVESTIES at the Simkins Lee Theatre at Lady Margaret Hall. This hilarious show is unmissable and the funniest thing you will see all Christmas season. Stoppard’s play, written in 1974, has been called surrealist, an example of Theatre of the Absurd, and a "philosophical farce". This is sophisticated humour, full of paradox and scintillating wit alongside doggerel verse and bits of utterly silliness. If we wish, we can see it as a serious exploration of the difficulty of making sense of life and creating a synthesis of its disparate elements. Stoppard stumbled on the fact that James Joyce, Tristran Tzara and Lenin were all in Zurich around the same time in 1917, and that Joyce had been involved in putting on a production of Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” in the middle of the hideous carnage of the First World War. This had led to him being sued by a minor consulate official, Henry Carr, for the cost of a pair of trousers used in the production. From that combination of the bizarre and the banal, Stoppard weaves a fantasy in which Carr meets all three of these political and artistic revolutionaries in Zurich and gets thoroughly mixed up with them and his own unreliable memories of what took place. Could Lenin, while planning the Russian Revolution, have bumped into Joyce, writing his masterpiece Ulysses, at the Zurich public library? Could Tzara, the rebellious exponent of Dadaism, and Carr, a stock conventional type, have played Algernon and Jack and been rivals for the same young lady? What is the purpose and justification of art in a world of war and revolution? Stoppard takes these themes and develops them mischievously like a composer weaving a fugue, using a medley of different accents and parodic styles. It is masterly and it is very entertaining. This production by the Oxford Theatre Guild has a very strong cast, led by Alastair Nunn in the hugely demanding marathon rôle of Henry Carr. Craig Finlay is a very believable, untidy and badly-dressed James Joyce, and Tim Bearder is an appropriately exaggerated Tzara, enfant terrible of anti-establishment art and lifestyle. Meanwhile, Peter Green makes an amazingly convincing Lenin. He is almost uncanny and is very well-supported by Laura Kurovska as his wife Nadezhda. Fleur Yerbury-Hodgson as Cecily and Monica Hash as Gwendolen give polished and stylish performances. Everything about this production is good and it makes a wonderful inaugural show for the newly-built Simpkins Lee Theatre in Lady Margaret Hall. The theatre is plush and comfortable, well-heated and raked so that everybody can see and hear. Altogether this is a great night out. Be there! Julia Gasper. To find out more: http://www.oxfordtheatreguild.com/index.html http://www.lmh.ox.ac.uk/Events/Comedy--Travesties--in-Simpkins-Lee-Theatre.asp |
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