About Rough Crossing

• a note from the artistic director
• Found in Translation: Ferenc MolnÁr and Tom Stoppard
• DIRE STRAITS: 1930s IMPRESARIOS ON THE BRINK
• CASTLES ON THE SEA: LUXURY OCEAN LINERS OF THE 1930s
• STOPPARD'S SCREWBALLS
• Not-so-Private (Backstage) Lives
  (on the Silver Screen)

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STOPPARD'S SCREWBALLS

 

If you have fond memories of Cary Grant’s madcap efforts to win back Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, or Katharine Hepburn smashing Cary Grant’s carefully constructed dinosaur skeleton to bits in Bringing Up Baby, you will find something delightfully familiar about Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing.

These films aren’t just comic masterpieces on their own—they are emblematic of an entire genre of 1930s comedies representing a high point in Hollywood filmmaking. Created in the era just after silent film gave way to “talkies,” 1930s Hollywood romances—often called screwball comedies—weave together love stories, farce, and slapstick. Light and witty, these comic works are sometimes thought of as an antidote to the Depression Era in which they were made, a necessary celebration of humor and romance in a difficult time. They are often comedies of remarriage, love stories that went right the second time around, with savvy heroines who outsmart their baffled mates. And they often transport their characters to a location outside of the “the real world”—in the countryside, for instance, or in transit: places that allow for life to be turned upside down just long enough to be set right again.

You’ll recognize all of these elements in Rough Crossing—in fact, Tom Stoppard consciously riffed on these classic forms of comedy as he adapted Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár’s play. In changing Molnár’s palatial setting to the cross-Atlantic S.S. Italian Castle, Stoppard forces his characters to work out their romantic problems—in classic screwball manner—over the four-and-a-half days they’re on board. Adam and Natasha become the young loving pair of the classic comedy, while Gal, Turai, and Ivor Fish by turns help and hinder their reunion. And Stoppard loads the comedy with all the trappings of the decadent Hollywood tale, turning the culture of the transatlantic cruise into rich material for humor.

Gal and Turai’s attempts to re-script the drama between the romantic duo are also a nod to the interplay between Hollywood and the theatre of the 1930s, as Molnár was one of the very playwrights who influenced this brand of Hollywood comedy. And, not surprisingly, some of the most popular and successful films were the ones that, like Rough Crossing, took on the madcap trials and tribulations of theatre people themselves.

—MIRIAM FELTON-DANSKY
Production Dramaturg