Five short plays are presented in a combination entitled Havel: The Passion of Thought. The centerpiece is three of Vaclav Havel’s inherently political and autobiographical Vanek plays. The fictional Ferdinand Vanek is a dissident playwright whose work has been banned by the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Surrounding these fascinating and completely different works are two short plays by Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. The entire bill is exceptional theater from start to finish.
Pinter’s The New World Order begins with two men in an interview room hovering over a hooded prisoner seated in a chair. Michael Laurence and Christopher Marshall taunt him. They are relishing the idea of what they are going to do to him and his wife. The torture speech is quite relaxed and unspecific which makes the verbal assault chilling. The tone of oppression is firmly established. They are “keeping the world clean for democracy.”
Havel’s Vanek plays follow. All three involve a man named Vanek (David Barlow, outstanding) who was once a successful playwright but has since been silenced by the authorities. The first is titled Interview. Forced to work in a brewery to support himself, Vanek is subjected to a meeting with the brewmaster (Mr. Laurence). Over the course of a beer-fueled conversation, we learn that the boss has been asked to spy on him.
Private View takes place in the apartment of Michael and Vera (Mr. Marshall and Emily Kron). Vanek has been invited to admire their redecoration. This hilariously self-absorbed couple obviously is not suffering under the regime. They desperately want to help their “best friend” and heap increasingly insulting advice. The absurdities escalate to a satisfying and exasperating ending.
The third play is perhaps the most potent. The idealistic Vanek can see the suffering of those who have fallen over and adapted to Communist doctrine in the first two scenes. Protest makes us hear that conflict. An old friend Stanekova (Danielle Skraastad) is a fellow artist who telephones Vanek out of the blue. She was a cooperative type who abandoned morality for a successful career in television. Why has she called after all this time? Years of complicity have finally caught up with her. The debate about her choices is fascinating.
What makes these plays so interesting for the audience is to see the world through Vanek’s eyes. Much of the time he listens. Are they judging him or themselves? Since Havel’s plays were banned at the time, they were performed in living rooms and distributed as samizdat (dangerous dissident self-publishing). The character of Vanek became quite well-known and other authors also wrote plays about him. The character became a national symbol. After the Velvet Revolution, Havel was elected the President of his country.
The short Samuel Beckett play Catastrophe was dedicated to then imprisoned Havel and concludes this collection. A protagonist (Mr. Barlow) stands on a box. The theater director (Madeline Ciocci) barks orders to her assistant (Emily Ballou), often drinking shots to get inspiration. The scene is extremely demeaning. This piece can be seen as overtly political about the struggle to oppose totalitarianism. It can also be seen as an insider joke about the behavior of actors, playwrights and directors. In either interpretation, the visuals here were stunning under Hallie Zieselman’s lighting design.
I caught these five plays as Trump was attempting to stifle members of the opposing political party during his self-adulating fascist rallies. In Protest, Stanekova says, “the way I see it, you and your friends have taken on an almost superhuman task: to preserve and carry the remains, the remnant of our moral conscience through this present quagmire. The thread you’re spinning on may be thin, but who knows, perhaps the hope of the moral rebirth of our nation hangs upon it.”
Directed by Richard Romagnoli, this exceptional troupe of actors brought all of these important works to vivid life. Havel: The Passion of Thought is a thoroughly absorbing evening in the theater. The timing is certainly ideal. Pair this one with PTP’s similarly excellent Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth being performed in repertory. Let these playwrights show you an urgent glimpse into a not so distant past where government aggressively suppressed dissent.