Tom Stoppard’s Travesties takes as its theme three major historical and literary figures, James Joyce, the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and Lenin, and weaves them all into an extraordinary whirlpool of comedy and exposition. The Pigfoot Theatre, an Oxford University student company, puts its own spin on the play by casting women in the roles of Joyce (Kate Weir) and Tzara (Julia Pilkington).

Henry Carr (superlatively played by Lee Simmonds) is an old man remembering the time when, as consul in Zurich in 1917, he encountered Joyce, Tzara and Lenin, arguing with two of them and spying on the third. But Carr is a man with dementia and as such is hardly a reliable narrator, as becomes increasingly clear.

There is glittering wordplay (“war is capitalism with the gloves off”) and the rewinding and replaying of scenes as Carr struggles to remember what actually happened (and how many sandwiches does Simmonds eat in the process?). Joyce is dismissively recalled as “an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognised”. Tzara makes poetry out of sonnets and a pair of scissors. As for Lenin, there is nothing wrong with him, we are told, except for his politics. Then there is Bennett the butler (a poised performance by the towering Jon Berry), keeping Carr informed of the politics behind the Russian revolution.Not to mention Carr’s obsession with trousers.

In the second half, Lenin (Stas Butler) is more prominent, along with his wife Nadya (Constance Kampfner). While they seek to escape from Zurich to Russia, Carr finds himself distracted by the librarian Cecily, delightfully played by Emma Howlett, not least in a final scene which underlines the unreliability of the story we have just witnessed.

All in all, a fine production of a seminal play. It rushes along at dazzling speed, touching on serious subjects – war, social revolution, the role of writers and artists, the inevitable decline which old age brings – but all along it keeps the audience laughing.