TRAVESTIES (2018) Previews

Previews for the first Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard's Travesties begin tomorrow (Thursday, March 29, 2018) at the American Airlines Theatre. Starring Tom Hollander as Henry Carr, Travesties is set to officially open on Tuesday, April 24 for a limited run currently through Sunday, June 17.

Who's going?!

There's still a lot available over the next few days, btw. More than 200 seats left for tomorrow's performance, if anybody's curious (and 350+ for Friday night's).

so weird, whenever I go onto Roundabout's website to look at getting tickets for this I get a server runtime error

Yeah, I primarily use Safari....good call, though, for me it's now working on Chrome.



Super weird!!

Saw this in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory. I like Stoppard in general, and I think this play works well on the page. But seeing it live I thought the play was just way longer than it needed to be, and some of the production choices, while not awful, just made the 2.5 hours feel longer and duller. Tom Hollander is really excellent though, so if you get a good price on tix, it's worth seeing just for him.

Just brushed off my copy of Travesties from a British drama course I took years ago in college. The notes I have inside remind me how smart this play is. While I've never seen it on stage, I am curious to check out this production! Going to re-read The Importance of Being Earnest and Travesties before booking a ticket soon.

Hope it's great! I fear this is a great case of Stoppard being better on paper.

Saw the original Broadway production starring John Wood. Very entertaining, especially if you were an English major. But if you don't know anything about James Joyce or THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, you'll miss a lot of the fun.

The set is beautiful (reminded me a little of Describe the Night at Atlantic) and the production was in top shape for a first preview (these days I am amazed when a first preview doesn't get cancelled). Tom Hollander was absolutely fantastic and gives a great performance- Sadly, this was not a play I enjoyed watching. I'm probably the target audience since I am a literature/theater/anglophile nerd but was more baffled than entertained. I was not familiar with the play and expected a laugh riot but aside from a few lines didn't find it funny at all. Some parts are madcap, some become serious, some stretches are just boring repetitive monologues, some are ridiculous Kate Hamill-stlye dance numbers. Many people around me fled during the intermission. I enjoyed the second half better when the show gets more into the "Earnest" territory but this was such a disappointment. I could be the minority here since the play is loved by many people, it was just too chaotic and incoherent. Show runs 2:30 but feels longer.

WhizzerMarvin said: "I can’t think of a single playwright whose works act more as proof ofevidence for all the massive amounts of research that went into them than Tom Stoppard. Travesties is essentially layer upon layer of brilliant (and brilliantly esoteric) ornamentation.....

Whizzer: Excited to see this tonight. Your reviews have inspired my travel lately. Led me to come up two weeks ago to see "Three Tall Women," which I decided this morning to see again this weekend. Was surprised to find as many tickets as I did still available, given the rave (as anticipated) reviews. Also seeing "My Fair Lady," which was certainly on my list. But your post and others the night previews began expedited my plans. Checked several weekends, all performances, and was lucky to find one ticket, literally one ticket, that wasn't on the far reaches of the loge. I fully expect to love it. Thanks!

Pacificnorthwest, I’m so glad you loved Three Tall Women! Travesties the play is certainly a brilliantly written work...this production is chaotic and definitely doesn’t do any hand holding with the audience. They really do need to do something about the first half of act one, but act two does play much better.

There were a bunch of walkouts around me too, but for what its worth the people in the audience who seemed to be enjoying it, really seemed to like it and the applause from the small group who stay til the end felt strong. What’s odd is that this would have played so much better in the Pels and Idina could have sold out her play in the American Airlines.

Btw- are those your cats? If so, they are adorable!!! What are their names?

I saw the show in London a year ago -- a 2-Stoppard double header with one weekend at TRAVESTIES and one weekend at ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD starring Daniel Radcliffe. I kind of wish it had been the Radcliffe show that had come over instead of TRAVESTIES. His Rosencrantz was truly brilliant.

Travesties can be brilliant too. I still fondly remember the original John Wood production. That show was lush and funny and deeply moving in depicting the memory loss of advancing age. Somehow most of that is missing in the new production. The words are all there in their mensa-testing complexity, but the unit set does not transform, the costumes are basic, and the deeper emotions never take hold. Stoppard if done right can move you to tears. This one nailed the Vaudeville and the Kafka, but missed the heartbreak, which made for a lesser night of theater all around.

Updated On: 3/30/18 at 11:13 AM

WhizzerMarvin said: Btw- are those your cats? If so, they are adorable!!! What are their names?"

Thank you! Yes, those are my little beasts. They're brothers, 4 years old. As kittens, they took a wild ride in the wheel well of a car before escaping at a stop and being rescued by a friend's daughter, which how they came to my babies. They're incredibly sweet and hugely destructive. But I adore them, of course. They are "Kissa," which is kitty in Finnish (my heritage) and "Kokko," short for the small Baltic Sea city where my (distant but wonderful) relatives live.

The dialogue of "Travesties" sounds so intriguing, even if the production is imperfect. I actually downloaded a study guide to my Kindle, which I'm sure will make some on these boards LOL.