Putney theatre lovers set to go On the Razzle (From Surrey Comet)

Putney theatre lovers set to go On the Razzle

8:59am Friday 14th October 2011 in Theatre

One of Tom Stoppard's most famous plays is to be staged at Putney Arts Theatre next month.

On the Razzle is an adaptation of a mid-19th Century Viennese farce by Johann Nestroy, a playwright as admired as much as Shakespeare in his native Austria but virtually unknown in Britain.

The play revolves around Zangler, the owner of an upmarket grocery shop, who heads into the city to wine and dine his fiancée.

His two assistants decide that they must “acquire a past before it’s too late” with one last glorious night "On the Razzle" before settling down to a humdrum life behind the counter.

A series of increasingly absurd and convoluted subterfuges are required to avoid discovery as they progress through fashionable Vienna, encountering bagpipers, parrots and a sex-obsessed hansome cabman.

Stoppard described his adaptation as “Cross-country hiking with map and compass".

He said: “All the main characters and most of the plot come from Nestroy. But not much of the dialogue attempts to offer a proper translation of what Nestroy wrote; and anything improper has less to do with Nestroy than with my unregretful capitulation to the possibilities of sexual innuendo as and when they occurred.”

Fortunately director Stuart Watson is no stranger to Stoppard’s plays, having directed Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth for Putney Theatre Company in 2005 and the playwright’s most recent work, Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Questors Theatre in Ealing last year.

Watson, who first appeared in a Stoppard play aged 12, said: “I’m not sure how much of it I really understood back then, but the breakneck pace, the silliness and the obvious delight in wordplay must have made an impression on me because I have been watching, acting in or directing Stoppard’s plays most of my adult life.”

The play will run from November 1-5 at the Putney Arts Theatre, Ravenna Road, Putney.

Performances will be at 7.30pm and tickets can be purchased from the box office on 020 8788 6943.