Baffling, enthralling,

Travesties, now revived at Pitlochry in the slightly revised version also seen in London last year.

And from the moment when Mark Elstob first appears as the aged Carr, wrapped in a dressinggown and offering us his unreliable memoirs of the moment when he claims to have been at the heart of European history, it becomes clear that this year’s Pitlochry company, with director Richard Baron, are giving Stoppard’s pyrotechnically brilliant play a superb run for its money.

Staged with impressive speed and wit on a perfectly-tuned, fast-changing set by Adrian Rees, Baron’s production makes a fine job of capturing both the dream-like, morphing quality of a text that constantly revisits different remembered versions – Leninist, Dadaist, Joycean – of the same scene; and the underlying seriousness of the debate about art and revolution that shapes Stoppard’s vision.

In the end, it is worth asking whether the increasingly timely but slightly pat conclusion behind this play – “if you can’t be a revolutionary, you might as well be an artist” – really measures up to such a breathtaking display of theatrical ingenuity and invention.

As Carr, though, Elstob demonstratesafaultlesscommand