Word: leninization
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...most important question of life concerns fame-who gets it, who doesn't, and why. Some-Lenin, Joyce, for instance, go on from the murky obscurity of 1918 Zurich while others stay behind. Is it talent, luck, a combination of the two? Or is it the blind dice shaking in the hands of an angry god, rolling thunder, Jordan and sixes with equal equanimity and an uncaring laugh...
...that, as Stoppard says, is a thought. James Joyce as I knew James Joyce, in Zurich in 1918: a myopic drunken Irishman; bloody pacifist. Or Lenin, a ripple in the seemingly endless stream of refugees and cafe plotters, writing Imperialism in the public library. Lenin as I knew Lenin. The Lenin I knew, or if memory serves, Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov: short, balding, desperate to lead the revolution finally taking place in Russia. A snowball in hell-wants to turn the civilized world into a standing committee of workers' deputies. Tom Stoppard's brilliant play Travesties opens with a dark Flander...
...that's a thought. Lenin and Joyce, together in Zurich in 1918--one a revolutionary artist, one merely a...revolutionary who would remake the civilized world-or Russia, at least-into, well, a standing committee of workers' deputies. What if they encountered each other? Better yet, what if they encountered a third party, a silly fop who, like everyone else at this early stage, doesn't recognize their greatness. This is the protagonist of the play, Henry Carr, an old man retelling the story of his days in Zurich during the war, when he may or may not have been...
...first act involves Carr, Gwendolyn (Katharine McGrath), Carr's sister and a Joyce patron, Joyce himself (played by James Booth), and Tristan Tzara, the Dadaist artist. While on orders from London to keep an eye on the Bolshevist Lenin, Carr finances Joyce's theater troupe in a performance of Ernest, for which Joyce promises him the lead role. After the opening library scene, the lights dim and the spotlights come out on Carr, an old man in a housecoat who sets the scene and reminisces about the old days in Zurich. The play, but especially this scene, showcases the talents...
...second act is not as good, not as quick or as funny, tacked on as if Stoppard also needed to catch his breath. For one thing, he finds himself caught in his extended metaphor on The Importance of Being Ernest. For another, the second act is more concerned with Lenin, ably portrayed by Jack Bittner. But the speeches he gives are Lenin's own, and political bombast is only amusing in a very bourgeois sense. The act moves to conclusion inexorably picking up speed, and unifying it with the first act is Wood's tremendous performance as Carr. Finally...