"Adaptation in Stoppard's terms means finding a sympathetic text and using it as a springboard for invention that leaves the original far behind."--Irving Wardle's description of the first production of Rough Crossing also applies to On the Razzle.

Based on a classic farce, Play at the Castle by Ferenc Molnar, Rough Crossing takes place on shipboard as two playwrights struggle to finish a musical comedy and rehearse it before docking in New York; in On the Razzle, adapted from Einen Jux will er sich machen by Johann Nestroy, two shop assistants live it up while dodging their employer in the restaurants and nightspots of Nestroy's nineteenth-century Vienna. Both words and action reveal Tom Stoppard as a master of comic technique.