Gordin's View

Travesties at Bay Street Theater

Tom Stopper’s hilarious 1974 Tony Award winning absurdist memory play, Travesties, is the second production of Bay Street Theater’s Mainstage season under new Artistic Director Scott Schwartz. Director Grego

ry Boyd, Artistic Director of Houston’s Tony Award winning Alley Theater, has assembled an outstanding cast headed by Richard Kind, a familiar figure at Bay Street, who was recently nominated for a Tony Award and won the Drama Desk award for Best Featured actor in a play for his performance on Broadway in The Big Knife. He plays an increasingly confused British Consul Henry Carr. Under Boyds guidance the gifted actors pull out all the stops in a swift paced non-linear production of Carr’s deranged fantasy that springs from his befuddled mind.

Set in Zurich, Switzerland, the actions takes place in the drawing room of Carr’s apartment and a section of the public library, with Carr bumbling about lost in his memories of being in the First World War, and meeting up with James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Lenin, through an amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest. The high spirited and broad comedy about art and revolution tackles the role of the artist in society giving us fresh and amusing search for the meaning of life, which ultimately turns out to be whatever you wish to create.

The cast surrounding Kind includes Michael Benz as Tristan Tzara, Carson Elrod as James Joyce, Aloysius Gigl as Bennett, Isabel Keating as Nadya, Julia Motyka as Gwendolen, Emily Trask as Cecily, and Andrew Weems as Lenin. The actors commit fully to the zany style with special kudos to Julia Motyka and Carson Elrod. Both actors bring delightfully colorful nuances to their witty work and their chemistry together is wonderful.