Travesties

Little did British consul Henry Carr know that his 1918 performance of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest would one day form the basis for a dazzling comedy of manners by Tom Stoppard. But it did. Stoppard’s intellectual farce, Travesties, effortlessly mixes the familiar plot and characters of Wilde’s play with the hilarious reminiscences of one Henry Carr, who watches the First World War from the comfort of Zurich, Switzerland where he meets some of history’s most colorful and influential exiles; the Irish writer, James Joyce; the Dadaist poet, Tristan Tzara; and the revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin. But Carr’s hazy memory of these great figures is filtered through a lens of almost total self-absorption. Yes, he recalls meeting them, but did he really sue Joyce for the cost of his trousers, and was Lenin blond or bald?