In the 1930s, successful Hungarian playwrights Sandor Turai and Alex Gal, collaborators for twenty years, arrive aboard the luxury transatlantic liner SS Italian Castle, which is about to sail from Cherbourg to New York, where they are to present their latest musical comedy, The Cruise of the Dodo.
The three intend to surprise their stars, the glamorous Eastern European actress Natasha Navratilova and the intellectually-challenged English actor Ivor Fish, with the newest song from the as yet unfinished play.
Rough Crossing opened at the Lyttelton Theatre in London on 30 October 1984 with the following cast: It was directed by Peter Wood and designed by Carl Toms.
Rough Crossing made its New York debut with the Jean Cocteau Repertory Company in 1997, starring Craig Smith as Turai, Harris Berlinsky as Gal, Tim Deak as Adam, Elise Stone as Natasha, Charles Parnell as Ivor and Christopher Black as Dvornichek.
[4] CurtainUp reviewer Les Gutman calls the play "not terribly interesting", citing in particular a fundamental incompatibility between the source material's comedy and Stoppard's absurdist style.