There are many plays that struggle to have enough ‘fuel’ to convincingly get going let alone carry a full length work.

This is not the case with Tom Stoppard’s fertile 1974 play, ‘Travesties’. The play explores the unreliable memoirs of Henry Carr, a minor English consul officer, who recalls his time spent burning the midnight oil in heated discussions with three famous radicals in Zurich in 1918. These three radicals were each engaged in revolutionary activity; James Joyce in literature, Tristan Tzara in art and Vladimir Lenin in political philosophy. With ‘Travesties’ Stoppard sets up a great debate, what kind of a role can the creative arts play in changing society?!

Richard Cottrell’s fine Sydney Theatre Company production made the most of this rich work.

The tone of the evening was set straight away with the Salvador Dali like safety curtain that greeted audiences when they arrived.

Michael Scott-Mitchell’s revolve set cleverly delineated the action between the two locales; the public library, where the characters interacted, and Henry Carr’s apartment where the elderly Carr recalls his bright past.

The cast revelled in Stoppard’s high energy philosophical farce, which also involved stepping in an out of mirroring roles in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.

Jonathon Biggins, looking the part in a dapper yellow, black and blue stripped jacket, was well cast in the leading role of Henry Carr, a rather precious, opinionated public servant who finds himself excitedly centre stage with a few of the icons of his generation.

Carr has an opinion on each of them. Toby Schmitz was great as Tristan Tzara, who Carr described as an overexcited little man with a need for self expression far beyond his natural gifts’. Peter Houghton was fiery as James Joyce, ‘that Irish lout’. William Zappa was intense as the ‘humourless’ Vladimir Lenin.

‘Travesties’ plays the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House until the 25th April.