Plaza Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts
April 10-May 3

"Travesties" is early Tom Stoppard, which is to say that it is dazzling, witty... so busy being clever that it can't quite be anything else... so clever that, most of the time, it's hard to mind... Louise Kennedy, Boston Globe

It would be easy to make a travesty of the precise smarty-pants vaudeville that is Travesties. In its modest way, the Publick makes sweet hay of it... Carolyn Clay, The Phoenix

Trust Tom Stoppard... to think he can improve on perfection. No, really, trust him; he’s up to the task. So is director Diego Arcienagas of Publick Theatre...don’t miss this change to see it done right... Brian Jewell, Bay Windows

Join Henry Carr- dubious British diplomat and amateur thespian- on a whirlwind trip down memory lane to Zurich 1917, in Tom Stoppard’s witty and riotous examination of the politics of art, the art of revolution, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

In his award-winning Travesties, Stoppard offers both a zany spoof of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy and a fiery debate among a trio of Modernist thinkers- Vladimir Lenin, Dadaist Tristan Tzara, and James Joyce- on the role of artists in shaping society. Told through Carr’s fraying recollections, these revolutionaries, and their beliefs on history, war, politics, and humanity, collide in a clever freewheeling battle of aesthetics and wordplay.

Director - Diego Arciniegas*
Set Design - J. Michael Griggs**
Costume Design - Rafael Jaen**
Sound Design - John Doerschuk
Lighting Design - Kenneth Helvig

* Member, Actors Equity
** Member, United Scenic Artists