This is Stoppard’s 22nd play, a zany farce which had me laughing out loud.  It felt like a cross between Groucho Marx and the Three Stooges as Stoppard let his sense of humor run wild with mistaken identities, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and sexual double entendres.

He adapted this play loosely on an 1842 Viennese play by Johann Nestroy. The play had been adapted twice before by Thornton Wilder, the second play entitled “The Matchmaker” later became famous as the Broadway musical and movie “Hello Dolly”.

Stoppard’s adaptation bears no resemblance to the Carol Channing classic.  He derived the title from a British euphemism usually referring to a celebrity who has had much too much to drink, and the play feels that way from the get go.

Zander is a Viennese grocer who sees himself as important and grand. He is concerned that Marie, his young niece, is being pursued by a Don Juan named Sonders but is also concerned with his new uniform which he’ll wear in the upcoming parade as the president-elect of the Sporting and Benevolent Societies of the Grocers’ Company.  His servant Gertrud is charged with hiding Marie with Zander’s sister, and his other servant is charged with arranging a fancy lunch for Zander to propose to his fiance at whose hat shop, Zander’s employees Weinberl and Christopher become enmeshed with another woman, Mrs. Fischer.

If this sounds crazy, it is, and it’s also great fun and very funny.  Hard to imagine Stoppard who wrote the overwhelmingly sad “Leopoldstadt” as the creator of this hysterical romp.