Though you wouldn't know it from the wilder reviews, the opening of [On the Razzle] was a flatter-than-expected affair. No one seemed to be rolling in the aisles, busting their guts, or indulging in analogous acts of cachinnatory self-violence; and the questions to be asked are these. Did the presence of all those scribbling critics and professional first-nighters cause a paralysis onstage that transmitted itself back to the audience, meaning that future performances may be more relaxed and funnier? Or is there something in Stoppard's adaptation of the 19th-century Viennese playwright, Johann Nestroy, innately inhibiting to laughter? Or, as I suspect, is the truth a bit of each?

That laughter is indeed Stoppard's overriding aim is shown by the general failure to exploit the pathos inherent in the tale of the two wage-slaves who hotfoot it to the metropolitan fleshpots in hopes of acquiring memories, a 'past', to...