About the Book

Alongside his many major plays, Tom Stoppard has written several highly acclaimed translations and adaptations of works by other writers, which are collected together here for the first time, together with a new introduction by Stoppard. Five European Plays includes adaptations of plays by four major European dramatists—Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, Ferenc Molnár, and Václav Havel—Stoppard transports us to settings as diverse as nineteenth-century Vienna and the Czech Republic under communism. From the farcical humor of Rough Crossing, which follows two playwrights on a cruise ship who are struggling to finish a musical comedy before the ship docks, to the tender story of love and secrets in Dalliance, to the chillingly comic depiction of a writer working in Communist Eastern Europe in Largo Desolato, the plays reveal Stoppard as a master of technique, whose language shines in these translations and adaptations just as brightly as in his other works.

Praise for On the Razzle

“On the Razzle puts [Stoppard’s] own distinctive spin on the farce . . . strewn with wordplays and verbal gymnastics, by turns brilliant and outrageously silly.”—New York Times

“The play’s marriage of bristling intellectual wit and broad slapstick makes a curious, sometimes contradictory and always ingenious appeal to our highest and lowest natures—Oscar Wilde by way of ‘I Love Lucy.’”—Los Angeles Times

“There may be no script in English funnier than On the Razzle.”—Observer (UK)

Praise for Dalliance

“It is easy to see where Tom Stoppard’s nimble wit has sewn sequins on the already glittering fabric of the original . . . this is one of the most enjoyable plays in London.”—Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Praise for Undiscovered Country

“A kaleidoscopic study of hedonism in turn-of-the-century Vienna . . . witty, acerbic and rueful.”—New York Times

“A theatrical feast: a play that combines detailed psychology with a portrait of society . . . it’s a marvelous play because it pinpoints decadence with wit and irony.”—Guardian (UK)

Praise for Rough Crossing

“[Rough Crossing] demonstrates anew why [Stoppard] is the most brilliant writer of stage comedy alive, perhaps the most brilliant who ever lived . . . Accessible and ineffably charming . . . Radiant theater.”—Chicago Tribune

“Giddy with wordplay and dizzy with theatrical game-playing, Rough Crossing is Tom Stoppard at his most deliriously silly . . . It’s brilliant, it’s clever, it’s often quite funny.”—Boston Globe

“Adaptation in Stoppard’s terms means finding a sympathetic text and using it as a springboard for invention that leaves the original far behind . . . he weaves an increasingly amazing pattern of verbal misunderstandings, eccentric character development, showbiz spectacle, and sea-going hazards.”—Times (UK)

Praise for Largo Desolato

“The malicious lightness of Molière . . . A funny play that tells the truth.”—Los Angeles Times

“Largo Desolato in Tom Stoppard’s version emerges as a wonderfully comic and unself-pitying piece . . . A comic writer of genius”—Times (UK)

“A bitter comedy. It’s Athol Fugard at his bleakest and Kafka at his most horrifically absurd.”—Newsday