Synopsis: Latvia

Tom Stoppard’s After Magritte is a surreal comedy of improbable domestic juxtapositions in a suburban family, where a ballroom dancing couple prepares for a night out and the Mother toots on the tuba. Matters become even sillier with the entrance of Inspector Foot and Constable Holmes and their suspicions that the household is involved in a dastardly crime.

 

As the play opens, a half-naked Reginald Harris stands on a table unscrewing a light bulb while his wife Thelma searches the floor for 22-caliber bullets. Mother sleeps in a swimsuit on an ironing board, while a policeman – Constable Holmes - stands freeze-framed, peering through their window. Inside the room, two ballroom dancers, Reginald and Thelma Harris, are hurriedly getting ready.

 

The play’s plot boils down to each character’s memories of a man seen near the Tate Gallery, where a Magritte exhibition is being held. Was the man blind? Was he carrying a tortoise or a football? Oh, and by the way, whose mom is Mother?