Do not fancy that an intermission of writing is a decay of kindness. No man is always in a disposition to write; nor has any man at all times something to say.
(Johnson: Letter to Boswell)
However, I can usually think of something. On Monday I was taken to see Tom Stoppard’s Travesties. Two of his plays are on in London, the other being Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, with Daniel Radcliffe. The latter is on until the end of April and I hope to go.
The plot of Travesties is perfectly simple. In Zurich in 1917 Lenin, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara (founder of Dada) are all friends of a British diplomat, Henry Carr, who has a part in The Importance of Being Earnest. Many playwrights, my brother for instance, would find enough material here for a lifetime’s output. Stoppard throws an almost bewildering barrage of quick-fire gags, running jokes, visual jokes and clever aphorisms worthy of Wilde himself at an appreciative audience for a couple of hours. The play is too densely worded to catch more than a smattering of Stoppard’s ingenuous script. What did The Daily Telegraph theatre critic make of it on its first outing at the Aldwych in 1974?
A lively and sometimes hilarious literary frolic, Travesties displays once again Tom Stoppard’s talents as parodist, pasticheur and punster extraordinary… For all his brilliance, however, Mr Stoppard has allowed his material to get on top of him. He uses a battery of lightning changes of mood, charming surprises and delicious lines, but he has not digested into his play the slabs of theory about art and politics. He is alternately delightful and dull.
(John Barber, 11 June 1974)
I didn’t notice any dull bits. Stoppard’s later plays have a dangerously high dull quotient but not Travesties, with lines like “my art belongs to Dada”.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the box junction is finished and here are some bits and pieces.
