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There was this artist, a writer and Lenin
The three stooges: at least they are in Henry Carr's tale of life in Zurich in 1917 with Roger Ringrose (Lenin), Tom Davey (Tristan Tzara) and Nick Caldecott (James Joyce) in Travesties Travesties Birmingham Rep The Old Rep **** FIRST a confession. I am really not sure
what it was all about . . . but whatever it was it was very good. Tom Stoppard's
Travesties pays homage to Oscar Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest
- which I do understand - which Birmingham
Rep are running alongside this production with the same cast, a
throwback to the rep's roots all taking place in the theatre where it
all started. But back to Travesties which seemed to concern a minor diplomat, a footnote in Foreign Office archives called Henry Carr who was, or perhaps wasn't the British consul in Zurich during the First World War and had now reached that point in life when memory and reality were no longer on speaking terms, thus his recollections of life in the service were, at best, muddled and at worst, memories that perhaps belonged to someone else. It seems he appeared in The Importance of
Being Earnest, not as Ernest but . . . er . . . the other one
that he couldn't remember in a production managed by James Joyce who was
having Ulysses typed up by Carr's sister Gwen. The performance went
quite well apparently except that Joyce and Carr ended up suing each
other He was also very friendly with Tristan, or maybe
it was Jack, Tzara who founded the Dada movement which, apparently, was
a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and
colonialist interests which dadaists thought were the cause of war and
the creator of society's ills and essentially it was anti-art art or
something like that. Tristan's, or maybe Jack's,
more personal bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests were
directed more towards Gwen - I wonder if he called
her dadarling - who provided half the
romantic interest. Henry was not only
hobnobbing with the giants
of literature and art, a physically small giant
in Joyce's case, but was also an acquaintance,
or maybe not, of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his party name
of Lenin.
Scene after scene is played
out and then restarted with a different script and
outcome, presumably to give some idea of the
conflicting memories and thoughts in Henry's now addled brain of what
went on in the consulate and library. The library incidentally
provides the other love interest with straight-laced librarian and
part-time fantasy stripper Cecily who falls for Tristan, who is really
Henry, and not Jack. The cast, set and direction by
Philip Wilson can hardly be faulted and the clever lighting by Simon
Bond only adds to the performance Nick Caldecott is a prickly
Joyce, the author of what is probably one of
the longest and most famous books in world literature -
I suspect it is also one of the least read,
certainly to the end, books around. His Joyce
is small dapper and the owner of a collection of
jackets and trousers which match but never at the same time. Then there is Tristan, or Jack when he is at the library where he is not to be confused with Henry who you remember is also Tristan by the way. Tristan, not the Henry one, is played by Tom Davey in a rather intense way, wrapped in a university scarf rather like an eternal don striding across the quad of some Oxbridge college on his way to launch a lecture. Lenin is, well Lenin. Roger Ringrose
does not have a lot to work with as the less than entertaining
revolutionary but squeezes everything he can from the role including the
memorable parodied Wilde line: "To lose one
revolution may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like
carelessness." Helping his cause is Nadya,
Abigail McKern while helping his research is the librarian Cecily,
played by Emerald O'Hanrahan, Emma Grundy for Archer's fans out
there. Lenin fires her imagination
and social conscience, and for a while at
least; our firebrand revolutionary, up the proletariat, workers unite,
only chains to lose and all that librarian is manning the
barricades, which come somewhere between the As and Cs. Somewhere along
the line comfort must have
trumped causes though as she
ends up married to our
pillar of the establishment
She is either the essence of
sex or prim and proper staid depending upon which of old Henry's
fantasies you happen to be watching. Henry, by the way, is Matthew
Douglas who has to go from ancient and bumbling old duffer
to a man in his prime and, well, not
quite as bumbling, in the blink of a phrase.
Helping him hold his end up in the diplomatic whirl
is no nonsense sister Gwen, Emily Bowker and
his manservant Bennett played with a superior
air of indifference by Giles Taylor. The play has plenty of references to The Importance of Being Earnest including some parodies and running jokes along with recurring Stoppard themes of the relationship between art, revolution and politics. For all the cast, but particularly for Douglas and Davey, the play demands a tremendous feat of memory. Stoppard does not really write as people speak which means it requires actors to learn dialogue which does not quite trip naturally off the tongue. We even have a song suddenly popping up out of nowhere with a duet between Gwen and Cicely, a parody of Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean, as they both battle it out over Tristan not knowing there are actually enough Tristans to go round in any case. The original song incidentally was the theme song of Vaudeville comedians Edward Gallagher and Al Shean, uncle of the Marx brothers, and was a big hit in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies. Journalists learn to make
every word count and like writers use words as the brick to build ideas,
thoughts and narrative. It is what the words say that is important not
the words themselves. I always get the feeling that
Stoppard is fascinated with words and language and
uses them more like an
modern artist uses colours, mixing them up to
see what comes out, splashing them on a canvas for an effect. He also
likes clever word play and literary jokes and puns, and throwing
in facts which may, or may not, be true which can all
come at the expense of the narrative. Travesties was
beautifully acted, the dialogue quick-fire, at times it was very funny,
costumes and set were wonderful and you had to marvel at what was a
masterly piece of theatre – it was all very
clever and thoroughly enjoyable except it was
difficult to see either the point or
purpose. A play is a journey to that final curtain
when all has been revealed. Somehow in this one you reach the end but
you are not really sure how you got there or
indeed why. Roger
Clarke
Joyce had the final, and permanent, word though with parodies of both Bennett and Carr popping up as minor characters in Ulysses with Carr portrayed as an obscene, drunken English soldier in Dublin's Red Light district in Episode 15, Circe, which, ironically, gave Carr a measure of immortality as one of the trivial facts about the life of James Joyce. Carr was certainly in
Zurich at the same time as Lenin and Tzara but there is no record or
indication that he ever met either of them.
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All
of this comes out in a sort of First World War version of Groundhog
Day played out in the British consulate and public library of Zurich
in, incidentally, a very fine set, with three huge walls of bookshelves
created by Colin Falconer.