Prague has some very interesting attractions for theater lovers. The Mucha Museum is a study of the Czech graphic artist Alfons Mucha who rose to overnight fame in Paris designing an Art Nouveau theater poster for an 1894 performance of Gismonda starring Sarah Bernhardt. That same evening I saw Billy Rayner perform his stylishly entertaining cabaret act in the Royal Theater, an atmospheric 1920’s modern day Kit Kat Klub. Some nights there is a burlesque show. (Full disclosure: Mr. Rayner is my godson and his mom is one of my dearest college chums and proprietress of Chez Palmiers should you be in need of peaceful lodging combined with Basset Hound realness while traveling to New Orleans.) Another option for English speaking theatergoers is the Cimrman English Theatre. I caught their production of Conquest of the North Pole (Dobytí severního pólu).
As I’ve come to learn on this trip, Jára Cimrman was first introduced in a 1966 radio program. A fictional character, his persona was originally meant to be a modest caricature of the Czech people, their history and culture. Cimrman is so significant that in 2005 the country voted him The Greatest Czech, only to have his win disqualified due to… well, he’s not real. From that fact alone, I expected somewhat edgy, insider humor from this particular play.
The Jára Cimrman Theatre is one of Prague’s most frequented houses of the Cimrman canon. The legend is both a major character and a prolific “author” of a number of plays, books and films. Mr. Cimrman is also famous for proposing the Panama Canal to the United States and also writing an opera of the same name. He has a long list of amazing accomplishments including the invention of yogurt and advising Mendeleev, after reviewing a first draft, that the periodic table of elements should be rotated to its current orientation. The play I attended was at the Cimrman English Theatre whose mission is translate this uniquely Czech cultural icon into another language. In 2017, this troupe toured in the United States, introducing this intrinsic part of Czech folklore to Americans (and likely also to ex-patriots who fled after the 1968 Soviet invasion).
As is typical in Cimrman plays, the first act takes place in a lecture hall where academics comment on many things, including the story to take place in the following act. The devotion to Cimrman and the lines of his plays are revered similarly to Monty Python where people can recite the words verbatim. Act II tells the story of four men in a cold water swimming club who decide, without any knowledge or preparation, to conquer the North Pole in 1908. As you might imagine, silliness ensues.
The sold out audience with whom I attended Conquest of the North Pole laughed a great deal. I chuckled as well but not as often nor as heartily. Perhaps there is an element of Czech experience from this outrageous icon that is truly native to their culture. The play itself felt like our television show Saturday Night Live. There were funny bits, slower bits and a loose, entertaining quality to the staging. However, as a visitor to this country writing a blog on the weekend of its 100th anniversary of independence, I could readily understand and identify with the oft-repeated tag line that Czechs are “adaptable.” After a century of invasion and control by the Germans and then the Soviets, adaptability would seem necessary for survival.
I feel fortunate to have learned about this fascinating persona and briefly experience its mystique after five decades of influence within the Czech culture. Since we don’t really know if Cimrman is an American for sure (birth certificate controversy pending), perhaps as Americans we can also be adaptable and adopt him for the intellectual and moral void sorely missing from our current governmental leaders. Perhaps we also need Cimrman to rebloom the humanitarian essence of our national values. After all, isn’t it remarkable that when Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone he found three missed calls from Cimrman upon making his first connection?