Like much of Stoppard’s work, Travesties, first performed in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, was a post-modern reworking of a classic play — in this case, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Narrated by an unreliable British consular official, half a century after the incidents take place, Travesties sets up a collision between Soviet realism and modernist surrealism. In some ways, it encapsulates all the major themes of Stoppard’s prodigious oeuvre — exile, love, big ideas, witty dialogue. I watched a double-bill production of Travesties and The Importance of Being Earnest by a Kolkata-based theatre group...
Monitoring Antisemitism Intel
