The latest edition of the railway history magazine Back Track (I buy it for a friend you understand) has an article on the journey of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin to his friends and history) from Zurich to Russia which commenced on the 9th of April 1917. Every station, engine and journey quirk (the train diverted and reversed at Muhlacker so he could meet a German trade union official you know) is detailed before the eventual arrival at the famous Finland station in Petrograd and onwards to revolution. One hopes he had his diary with him - it's always important to have something sensational to read on the train.

All this would have been a touch too much information for Henry Carr, British consul in Zurich in 1917 (oh no he wasn't) struggling to keep track of Ulyanov, James Joyce (or was it Doris?), Dadaism and the contents of the rapidly emptying champagne cellar. Welcome to the world or rather worlds of Tom Stoppard's Travesties. Carr, or rather Old Carr played by Bob Hough, is writing his rather unreliable memoirs with their ever-changing title. Never one to bear a grudge he is busily trying to put the boot into Joyce while recalling his personal triumph in the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance of Being Algernon. No, not Algernon, the other one. There will be an explanation for this in a second but it will be improbable. Anyway, where was I? Old Carr, played irascibly and impressively by Bob Hough, is the lodestar of the play writing his ever changing memoirs with their unreliable titles. As he tries to recall the past and screws up an ever growing number of bits of paper (impressive crumpling sounds from Ruth Sullivan), we see the substantial pageant of characters appear before our eyes. Alan Maddrell's mysterious and metagrabolizing Tristan Tzara a Dadaist poet or as he would have put it poet as Alan would Tzara he Maddrell's have Tristan it put Dadaist would is one of Carr's visitors and the most likely to marry into a cloakroom and form an alliance with a parcel (he later became a surrealist) and forms a link to Comrade Lenin and Mrs Comrade Lenin and Gwendolen who is also Carr's sister of course. This is Dom Ward's exasperated and entertaining Young Carr of course, not Old Carr, although I suppose they remained brother and sister in later life, relations being a tedious pack of people. Anyway, where was I? Bennett, played by Rob Irvine had taken the only sensible course to all of this cleverness by drinking the consulate's champagne and beginning to show alarming signs of irony. This was a job well done especially the speech detailing to Carr the current state of Russian politics. When the time is ripe - and not before - there will be a further exposition. Sean McMullen's ebullient and illuminating James Joyce although of course, from Limerick, was full of Dublins or possibly that might be the wrong way round, and like Wallace and Grommit was very fond of the wrong trousers and indeed the wrong jackets, mostly at the same time. Which brings us back to Carr, or rather young Carr, and his obsession with trousers some of his best ones from Ramidge and Hawkes and Hamish and Rudge having been ruined in the trenches of the First World War. I know you want me to stop but hesitation is a sign of mental decay in the young and physical weakness in the old, so I will go on. Camilla Fox's ethereal and effervescent Gwendolen was always in command of her wild and whirling words my lords in an superior debut. Anyway, where was I? Lenin played by Adrian Calvo-Valderrama with impressive verve and a sartorial elegance that James Joyce could only dream of would not, you felt, have approved of all of this as literature should really be a cog in the Social Democratic mechanism. His declarations of Lenin's thoughts were terrifyingly impressive and I, for one would go to a one-dictator show full of them. Mrs Lenin, or Mrs Comrade or Nadya or Nadezhda Krupskaya, played by Sacha Walker was really the only one without multiple identities and had an impressive Russian vocabulary, a touching style and great comic timing. The translated exchange between her and Mr Lenin was the funniest thing in the evening. Translated of course by Lisa Castle's Cecily who forgave everything so long as the Reference section was about to close, which it was, several times, although not before she had made a terrific job of denouncing cubism, expressionism and rheumatism from one of its tables. Small wonder that young Carr fell in love and under the table with her. Far from being engaged to no-one she engaged both him and us. Anyway where was I? Stoppard's mental pyrotechnics and verbal gymnastics are not for everyone and it is striking how his later play Arcadia which deals with many of the same themes of memory, history and misplaced romance seemed to recognize this nineteen years on. Be that as it may the cast, like Young Carr, enjoyed personal triumph(s) in demanding roles, Jess Hammett dressed everyone to standards that even Young Carr would have been impressed by, Michael Bettell's set illustrated the dual and confounding nature of Stoppard's text and Director Adam Taylor produced as much clarity and hilarity from the confusion and obtusion as anyone could possibly have done and did not Bunbury at any point. I have been speaking nothing but the truth and hope you can forgive me.

Photography by Ruth Anthony