GENEVA ENGLISH DRAMA SOCIETY

Playreading 21 January 2003

TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard

James Joyce, running a Swiss theatrical company, invites Henry Carr to play in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Carr agrees and scores a success, but later there is a dispute over Carr's claim for reimbursement of the cost of articles of clothing bought for his role. The author uses this factual framework on which to build an extravaganza of political history, literary pastiche, and Wildean parody, even song and dance, introducing Dadaist Tristan Tzara, and Lenin and his wife. Period 1918.