Meg Warner, Greg Matthew Anderson and Jeff Cummings
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There is more than one lens through which to experience Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties:” One can know everything there is to know about James Joyce, Lenin, Dadaist Tristan Tzara and 1917 Switzerland, and die to revisit it, adore “The Importance of Being Earnest” enough to see it mucked about with, and all technically without Lady Bracknell, or one can throw back the draught of champagne that Stoppard serves up with this word-operetta, and attempt to follow the various hounds.
Director Nick Sandys’ hand is so deft as to be invisible, save for moments when an actor must be sent to a mostly front corner of the rather three-quarters playing space, turn their backs to many, and give their faces to the few who have purchased a ticket for a less advantageous seat. Joe Schermoly’s books-books-more-books set is so right that one hardly notices the increasingly asthma-producing, begrudgingly disturbed mold wafting from the spaces’ carpeting. Playing everyman Henry Carr, Jeff Cummings is in an impish high-tenor; to experience his performance is to be jealous not to be in his shoes, alternated by thankfulness that the responsibility for that warren of verbal and physical dance is not our own. Becoming both a new member of the core company of American Players Theatre and the Remy Bumppo ensemble must make this a heady time for Kelsey Brennan, but her lace-gloved, iron-fisted Gwendolen seems in no need of smelling salts; she commands where she may. If still damp-eared artistic director Sandys is the obvious successor to the retired James Bohnen, artistic associate Greg Matthew Anderson is Bumppo’s new Sandys, and models that mantle’s delicate combination of insouciance and pedantry with his faultless Tzara.
Some hold that Stoppard is a brilliant narcissus with his raincoat opened, inviting the audience to stand about in a circle with him. But Sandys and Remy Bumppo disprove what Newell and Court Theatre’s self-serious 2005 production suggested. Stoppard skewers Stoppard, too. Laughter is allowed! (Aaron Hunt)
Remy Bumppo Theatre at Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 North Lincoln, (773)404-7336, remybumppo.org, $42.50-$57.50. Through May 3.
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