Playing Around
Sometime last week, Mrs. Perils mentioned that a Tom Stoppard play was being presented at a small theatre nearby, so I scored four tickets, and we went on Thursday night with our son and a young/old friend of mine. We’ve seen two other Stoppard plays, Arcadia here in Seattle and Rough Crossing down in Ashland a few years ago, loved both and jumped at the chance to see another.
The play was The Travesties, which was first performed in 1974. Its premise is a hypothetical interaction in 1916 between James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara, the founder of the Dada movement, as recalled by an ultimately unreliable narrator late in his life. All three did, in fact, reside in Zurich at the time - Joyce was writing Ulysses, Lenin was in exile waiting for the right moment to join the revolution in Russia, and I have no idea what the Dada guy was up to - but Stoppard isn’t suggesting that any such interaction actually happened - it’s just a convenient setup for cascades of snappy comedic dialog.
And snappy it was, rich and clever, and it kept me in stitches. It was replete with puns, limericks and featured a sorta-history lesson delivered as a strip-tease that I thought would have been right at home in Gravity’s Rainbow - just a lot of nutty stuff. In order to fully comprehend some of the byplay, though, I might have to read up on Dada a bit and (sigh) finally tackle Ulysses.
The theater itself is situated in an old bathhouse down by Greenlake, about 2 miles from the house. It’s pretty intimate, seats 100 people at most. Last year we saw a production of David Mamet’s Boston Marriage there, with a cast of 3 women. The Stoppard play had a 7 or 8, and it seemed very busy by comparison. They pulled off a lot of kaleidescopic action with a single (I believe) scene change. It’s amazing to me the level of talent that you encounter in these small theater troupes, without the resources that the cash-cow repertories have at their disposal. (although they probably struggle to break even, too.)
And, happily, there’s a Stoppard play, On The Razzle, in the list of plays we’ll be seeing this July in Ashland. We purchased our Ashland tickets during the member’s presale last November, and our seats for all the performances just rock. We’re in the first row for almost every play, including the Stoppard.
Update: Here’s a much more coherent review from the Seattle Times
Synchronicity! My local troupe is performing Boston Marriage next month, although I don’t know their casting choices yet. I keep wanting to try out for one of their shows but I just don’t have time.
Local theatre gives me great hope about art in America. My boys love it, and I take them to most everything that plays around here, even when it’s more adult than is probably wise.
I’m looking forward to your continued reviews of the local stuff.
Wow, this sounded good!
Last play I saw was Man & Superman by Bernard Shaw.
I like that a Dadaist was in the one you saw though! ; )
Good to know that Stoppard - sometimes a strikingly English playwright - is knocking it to audiences across the pond. I couldn’t cope with him at first - too damn clever by half - but I got won round. How does Pinter go down in the States?
Hi, Dick! Yeah, Stoppard’s language is so flashy that some of the dialogue just came across as glib, but I cut brilliant prose stylists the same ice I cut supermodels.
Pinter’s been celebrated a little since his snarky Nobel lecture. Can’t comment on whether he’s performed or how it’s received. I’ve read one or two of his plays, but don’t think I’ve seen one.