A triumph on the London stage
Playwright: Tom Stoppard Director: Patrick Marber Running time: 2hrs 25mins (including interval) Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 (020-7378 1713) Until 19 November
Even by Tom Stoppard’s standards, Travesties (1974) is a dazzlingly clever and complex piece which “defies brisk summary”, said Henry Hitchings in the London Evening Standard. The play is built around the unreliable memories of a minor British diplomat, Henry Carr, who once sued James Joyce for the cost of a pair of trousers. In addition to the great novelist, onstage characters include Lenin and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, in a story involving courtship and conflicting egos in 1917 Zurich, a running pastiche of The Importance of Being Earnest,
and “arcane nonsense and arguments about the function of art”. It is the sort of “clever, dense piece that in the wrong hands can seem like an impenetrable prank”. But here, directed by Patrick Marber with a “finely tuned sense of its elegance and intelligence, it sparkles”.
And how, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. Tom Hollander is “superbly funny and, at times, fleetingly sad as Carr in both doddery anecdotage and dapper youth”. Indeed, the whole cast performs “the intellectual vaudeville with terrific pace, zest and dexterity”. Freddie Fox is “phenomenally good” as the artist Tzara, bounding around the stage with huge energy, said Ann Treneman in The Times. It’s impossible not to love a play that includes the immortal line from Tzara: “My art belongs to Dada!”
The return of Hollander to the stage after six years is a special joy, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. But the entire cast displays such energy and “finesse” that the play “hooks you in even as you pant to keep up”. And the “sungthrough showdown” between Clare Foster’s Cecily and Amy Morgan’s Gwendolen is “alone worth a wait in the returns queue”. In sum, you urgently “need to get hold of a ticket” to this astonishing show, said Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. Alas, the run at the intimate Menier is already sold out. “So you need to march on Southwark immediately, placards aloft, and demand a West End transfer. Nothing less will do.”
Believed to be the most expensive TV drama ever made, Netflix’s new show The Crown opens with King George VI (Jared Harris) coughing up blood into a lavatory. That sets the sensationalist tone, which will dismay anyone hoping for a polite look at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, said Stephanie Linning in the Daily Mail. Instead we get passionate kisses, expletive-ridden dialogue, and shots of a stark-naked Prince Philip (Matt Smith).
The reason Netflix splashed out a reported £100m on this series is that it’s hoping the drama will “blast through established viewing habits” and persuade older viewers to subscribe to its online streaming service, said Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer. Yet despite the high stakes, Netflix gave director Stephen Daldry and writer Peter Morgan total freedom. Offers of assistance from an understandably nervous Buckingham Palace were politely declined.
As it turns out, the Palace needn’t have worried, said Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph. The Crown is “a PR triumph for the Windsors”. For all its moments of melodrama, the show is skilfully written and very well acted. (Claire Foy, in particular, shines as the young Queen.) It’s at once “a portrait of an extraordinary family, an intelligent comment on the effects of the constitution on their personal lives, and a fascinating account of postwar Britain”.