What is the main conflict in Travesties by Tom Stoppard?

The play focuses on the fictional meeting of three important revolutionary figures in Zurich in 1917: the communist leader Lenin, the dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and the modernist author James Joyce. Henry Carr, who in real life knew Joyce, relates the trio's interactions through his unreliable memory. The play takes the form of a witty farce as it showcases, through comic wordplay, the political and philosophical point of view of these three men, who all had a profound influence on their times. Humorous complications spring from misunderstandings, mistaken identity, and plot twists that Stoppard horrows from Oscar Wilde's farcical masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest.