British Tom Stoppard is probably the most famous and popular European writer working for the theater today. His plays are a unique combination of word play and linguistic virtuosity, complex structures, comic tricks and philosophical reflections. With his first significant play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, hailed as “the most remarkable dramatic debut of the sixties,” as the influential Observer wrote at the time, Stoppard immediately captivated the theater world on both sides of the Atlantic and collected a huge crop of prestigious literary and dramatic awards. Later, Stoppard himself became the director of its film adaptation, for which he received the Venetian Golden Lion.

“Travesties” is a brilliant intellectual game, where the author’s partners are Wilde and Shakespeare, Lenin and Joyce. The fabric of Stoppard's play is magically woven from threads so heterogeneous that you can't help but be amazed by the playwright's imagination and the magic with which he connects the incompatible: Wilde and Shakespeare, Lenin and Joyce. Stoppard leaves it to the reader to “guess” the sources of borrowings.