Edward Albee‘s seminal play about the degradation of American marriage and ethics is another vehicle for a successful Soulpepper event. It’s a supremely difficult task to follow an act like Mike Nichols’ movie adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, whose famously tempestuous marriage imitated Albee’s plot.
Difficult, yes, but not impossible.
It’s no surprise that Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar‘s popular tale, which premiered in Budapest in 1910, was translated and has been embraced by the English theatre. The story of disguising a character to test a lover’s fidelity is a familiar one, employed in many a performance from classic mythology to Shakespeare.
The question “what if?” is all the fertilizer needed to sprinkle on the waking thoughts of most playwrights. Travesties, which opened February 18, was inspired by Tom Stoppard‘s discovery that James Joyce, Lenin and Dadaist founder Tristan Tzara were all living in Zurich in 1917.
