Five European Plays ― Nestroy, Schnitzler, Moln嫫, Havel

Based on the classic farce The Play at the Castle by Ferenc Molnár, Rough Crossing takes place on a cruise ship as two playwrights struggle to finish a musical comedy and rehearse it before docking in New York. In On the Razzle, adapted from Einen Jux will er sich machen by Johann Nestroy, two shop assistants live it up while dodging their employer in the restaurants and nightspots of nineteenth-century Vienna. Václav Havel's Largo Desolato portrays a tortured writer living in a totalitarian state. The play is dedicated to Tom Stoppard, who provided the translation for its world premiere in Bristol in 1986. Taken together, these three plays reveal Stoppard as a groundbreaking playwright and a master of comic technique, and are available for the first time together in this new volume.

Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, Travesties and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia. His screen credits include Parade’s End, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, Empire of the Sun, and Anna Karenina.