Five European Plays: Nestroy, Schnitzler, Molnár, Havel

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.