Travesties - Sydney Theatre Company

Photo by Heidrun Löhr (Blazey Best [Gwendolyn], Toby Schmitz [Tristan/Dada]).


“The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.” (Tom Stoppard)

A sand-yellow canvas, vaguely reminiscent of a cubist artwork, veils the stage. Geometric shapes and abstract images are linked together loosely. The warning on this packet signifies that Tom Stoppard’s ‘Travesties’ is not for those who enjoy facile entertainment. It will require you to work the cogs of your mind, connect the dots, decipher wordplay and confront your own way of thinking. If you can jump these hurdles, Stoppard’s outstanding talent infused with Richard Cottrell’s superb directing will give life to an eccentric whirlwind of a play with its haughty political rants, impetuous romances, smooth intertextuality and sharp repartee.

The play begins as an ostensibly fragmented sequence of nonsense that slowly works in the concurrent circles of Henry Carr’s memory (signified by the cuckoo clocks that constantly sound when a motif reoccurs throughout the play). Soon, however, the mess constructs meaning and a plot emerges. ‘Travesties’ is set during the onset of World War I in 1917, and the subsequent migration of some of Europe’s most influential intellectuals to Zurich, Switzerland. The superb timing and malleability of the cast’s acting allows us to travel with ease between The Zurich Library and protagonist Henry Carr’s apartment on Michael Scott-Mitchell’s turning stage.

Each character parades their large egos on stage (unabashedly emphasised by an Armani-cut, but dandyish, costume design). The decoy English Consul, Henry Carr (Jonathan Biggins), is a vain but plush, costume-loving libertarian who is cast to play Algernon in James Joyce’s resident production of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’. Meanwhile, the brainchild of Dadaism, Tristan Tzara, (Toby Schmitz) who introduces himself in hilarious outbursts as “Dada”, is staging his poetic attack on the bourgeois stagnation of Modernist art by erroneously rearranging words of classic poems.

Dada soon takes a liking to Henry’s sister Gwendolyn (Blazey Best), who is infatuated with James Joyce (Peter Houghton) and his writing, willingly transcribing chapters of his oeuvre ‘Ulysses’ at the library. Cecily (Rebecca Massey), a librarian, is hatching a Soviet dream from her collaboration with Bolshevik Lenin (William Zappa), helping him prepare his thesis on Imperialism at the Zurich Library. In an unlikely turn of events, Cecily develops a soft spot for Henry Carr, who feigns his identity as Dada’s left-leaning brother in order to sniff out information about Lenin’s plan to escape, and lead the revolution rising in Russia.

The fantastic irony of the play’s situation is garnered from the omitted fact that each ideologue’s love-interest possesses, respectively opposite, political and artistic sensibilities. As this becomes apparent in each character’s reality, the social entanglement of the play escalates to humorous highs that will leave your head sore with laughter. Stoppard’s strength as a playwright lies in his ability to balance dramatic conflict and reveal the humanity behind the headstrong pretensions of each character. On another level, the play pays intertextual homage to Wilde, Marxist thought, Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, Libertarianism, and the movements of art that gave birth to Postmodernism, and portrays the effects that each of these has had on Stoppard.

Stoppard and Cottrell’s ability to merge and evenly represent all these paradigms in one play/production, without sacrificing the structure of the script, or the layer of realism that keeps audiences entertained, is evidence that this production deserves the accolade of your spectatorship. As the fresh-faced Toby Schmitz and the other equally brilliant members of the cast came to, and left the stage, I was compelled to give more than just one encore. I thought to myself, ‘this is exactly what I want to experience from the theatre.’

Published in Edition 4 of Vertigo - www.utsvertigo.com.