Travesties

Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin Previews Jun 8 Opens Jun 9-23 8pm (Sat mat 3pm) €18-€25 paviliontheatre.ie01-2312929

A few years ago Bloomsday flowered into Bloomsweek, a festival during which James Joyce’s “dailiest day possible” could be celebrated daily. To anyone who worried about overkill, this year’s expiry of Joycean copyright augured a potential flood of Joycean tributes and the suspicion that the work would become more honoured than read.

One antidote, which seems effervescent with wit, is not to put Joyce centre stage in tribute, but to give him a cameo appearance. Which is precisely what Tom Stoppard did with his 1974 absurdist comedy of 1917 intellectuals in Zurich.

Directed by Lynne Parker for Rough Magic, Travesties is narrated by Henry Carr, a British consular official who encountered Vladimir Lenin as he readied the Russian Evolution, Tristan Tzara as he fomented the Dada movement, and Joyce (played by Ronan Leahy, left) as he entered the throes of Ulysses.

In tone and substance, Travesties draws from them all, but Stoppard’s keener reference is Wilde making artful lifts from The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one revolution is unfortunate . . . ”

Erudite, fanciful and freewheeling, staging Stoppard’s play in this context makes a subtle and refreshing point. Joyce was not alone in literature or life, but a trailblazer among an artistic and intellectual continuum. You can’t have blooms without stems.

Can't see that? Catch these:The Importance of Being Earnest Lyric Theatre, Belfast