Review: TRAVESTIES at ICT Rep At The Welsbacher Theatre At The WSU Metroplex On Oliver & 29th

I had the unique pleasure of attending ICT Rep’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties on its final performance. The comedy ran for one week, July 18-21st, at the Welsbacher Theatre in the WSU Metroplex building on Oliver & 29th.  It was a delightful way to wile away a hot July Sunday afternoon. It brought back pleasant memories of youthful Sunday afternoons spent in the Court House Theatre at the Shaw Festival on Niagara-On-The-Lake. Scripts like Travesties are not de rigueur here in Wichita. Wichita Community Theatre presented Stoppard’s most well known play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead quite a few years back.

Travesties won many awards. In 1976 it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2017, the West End Revival won Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Revival, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The 2018 Broadway Revival won several Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Direction.

Tom Stoppard was born Tomás Straüssler in 1937 in Czechslovakia. He was raised in Singapore and India when his family fled Europe during World War II. His plays are known for rich, complicated characters whose intellectual musings and witty banter on morality, art, and existence make up the main action. Watching the play can be an intellectual exercise but even if you didn’t get any of the historical and critical references you would surely have enjoyed the play on it’s charm alone, with some absurd British humor in the Keith Johnstone/RSC vein thrown in for good measure. There is much Dada deconstruction of dialogue here, along with piecing many disparate elements of history together. The only threads connecting all the characters is that they are all present in Zurich during WWI. The play has a Pinteresque feel; think The French Lieutenant’s Woman, with all the flashbacks and flash forwards.

Stoppard weaves seemingly disparate subjects into one story. Travesties is a tale about Henry Carr, a consular official in Zurich, whose life intersects with James Joyce, the Irish novelist most well known for his groundbreaking novel Ulysses; Tristan Tzara, a key figure in the Dadaist movement; and Vladimir Lenin, a Russian revolutionary who hated modern art, and led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The plot loosely follows The Importance of Being Earnest in terms of mistaken identity and romance. It’s not a historical play, but flashes forward and backwards from the present and memories, from public library to Carr’s apartment.

Director Julie Longhofer set up the situation in her curtain speech, a detailed lecture describing Stoppard’s rhetorical devices, her working definitions of Travesties, and how this research informed her design and directorial vision, along with some of the most important historical details. Julie also designed the set, which was symmetrical and well appointed. The harmonious hues of reddish brown earth tones were repeated in the set and the costumes. The costumes, also designed by Julie, were simple yet elegant period pieces. The playing space was small but efficiently used, with good delineation between Cecily’s library and Carr’s sitting room. Lighting by Stan Longhofer was key in delineating these spaces. Along with lighting the playing area efficiently, Stan utilized backlit windows and wall sconces to create some great atmospheric effects. Completing the family effort was a beautiful sound design by Kirk Longhofer, replete with classical music and well timed sound effects.

Henry Carr, played exceeding well by Matthew Gwinner, a recent WSU Grad, switched back and forth from “Old” to “Young” Carr with the change of a coat. Gwinner’s got great timing, excellent enunciation, and deftly handled the half hour opening monologue, along with the rest of the challenging language, heavy dramatics, and the physical comedy with a clownish, elfin character that charmed the audience and kept them hanging on his every move. Coleman Adams, a local software engineer, surprised us with an excellent turn at James Joyce.  Adam’s accent was dead on, and his tongue in cheek, wry and witty delivery produced an eccentric character study worthy of the larger than life Joyce. Tristan Tzara, played here by James Earlywine, a junior at Millikin University, gave us some eye candy, and had a great eastern European accent. Tzara was always jumping up on the furniture when he wanted to make a point. Earlywine’s  use of physical comedy was at it’s zenith during Tzara’s dramatic delivery of a Dada poem to Joyce. The monologue is priceless, with the irony of Dada lost on Joyce, even though Joyce had given us the seminal post-modernist novel Ulysses.

Holland Lee Kiser, an ICT Rep veteran, gave us a mercurial Gwendolyn, the Secretary to Joyce who fell madly in love with Tzara. Never mind that Kiser has played Gwendolyn before in the ICT Rep production of The Importance of Being Earnest; she gave us a well articulated accent, and carried herself with all the upper crust carriage and intelligence we want this character to possess. Cecily, played by Jill Herbert, another ICT vet, revealed a smart yet stereotypical “sexy” librarian that she mined to the hilt. Cecily assisted Lenin in his research at the library, and eventually fell for Carr, under the guise that he is the “Algernon” to Tzara’s “Jack."

We don’t get to see much of Lenin and his wife, Nadya, a particularly dour couple both dressed in black, until the second act. Jo Smith, a recent WSU grad with a BFA in Theatre Performance,  is heading to the MFA Acting program at the Guildford School of Acting. With a spot on Russian accent, Smith played Lenin in a deadpan, serious fashion to great comic effect. Bronwen Burch portrayed Nadya as a beautiful but controlling influence over Lenin. Bennett, Carr’s servant and link to reality, played by Megan Upton Tyler, currently the Theatre Instructor at Andover High, gave us a dry, witty deadpan delivery, which was a great foil to Carr’s mercurial nature.

There was some great ensemble work here, with so many noteworthy moments. Without a doubt the best moment in the play was an hysterically naughty sight gag in the form of under the library table hanky panky, which set us up for more physical comedy in the opening of Act Two. Carr’s courting of Cecily is hysterical, and rife with silly sexual tension. There was a large rhyming section in Act One where we met all the characters, which was exceedingly awesome. I had difficulty hearing a great deal of the dialogue, though, because actors did not hold for laughs, but I think to pause may have ruined the rhythm. Similarly, Gwendolyn and Cecily had a scene set to music in Act Two. It parodied a scene in Earnest where the ladies meet socially and it is a comedy of manners gold mine. The very clever staging was set to music, and I don’t know if this is how the scene is traditionally presented or if this was the director’s idea, but again, dialogue was lost and actors could not hold for laughs. Following this, Carr and Tzara replaced the ladies at the table and ate their leftover tea snacks with gusto, to great comic effect.

Coming up next for ICT Rep? War Horse In Concert, in partnership with Wichita Symphony on October 27, 2024, followed by An Octoroon, a comedy by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. The show will run from November 15 thru the 24th, 2024. For more information, check out their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ICTRep) and Instagram (@ICTRep_Theater). Tickets can be purchased at ICTRep.SimpleTix.com

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