LEAVING. To 13 December.
Richmond.
LEAVING
by Vaclav Havel translated by Paul Wilson.
Orange Tree Theatre In rep to 13 December 2008.
20-25 Oct; 22, 29 Nov, 1-6; 8-13 Dec.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 3pm 25 Oct, 13 Dec, 2.30pm 4 Dec (+ post-show Discussion).
Runs 2hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co,.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 October.
Expressive disorientation at the end of power.
In The Shape of the Table David Edgar describes how a man of the people becomes separated from them when he becomes leader. Whether dissident playwright and Human Rights activist Vaclav Havel found that happening as President of the Czech Republic, he shows here what it can be like at the other end of power.
Like King Lear, Vilem Rieger believes things needn’t change when he’s no longer Chancellor; that no-one will remove him from the home where he’s enjoyed living. Like Ranayevskaya in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard he doesn’t want to leave his beloved house. Both plays are referred to, Lear rather awkwardly obtruding, the Chekhov with insinuating wit.
What happens when life’s not like that sends him as mad as Lear becomes. It’s not just his daughters - or one daughter, whose laptop-and-mobile existence he ignores as she swings near him in the garden. The press move in to dig up dirt, the silent start speaking; his partner of 15 years needs only one glimpse of him in flagrante with a seductive student to realise how contemptible he is, denuded of authority.
As everyone seems to rejects him Rieger’s world disintegrates into a whirl of denunciation and scorn. And if politics is theatre, so the only authority remaining is the disembodied authorial voice that stops the action, redirecting the actors or musing upon the techniques of playwriting; the stage, if not all the world, remains a province to govern. And the voice, here, is Havel’s.
There’s an range of jostling themes; the experience of watching becomes as disorienting, if not as distressing, as life becomes for the disabused Rieger who finds his successor contentedly swinging (pushed by Rieger’s former aide, suave and ever-present), speaking the fine phrases of democracy which had been empty when Rieger spoke them, and now come loaded with supercilious hypocrisy.
Bring a complex play doesn’t make it a great one; even with Sam Walters’ sympathetic, understanding direction and a fine cast, some moments strain for impact. But a genuine sense of displacement builds up, and its ingenuity is well-fitted to exploring Rieger’s psychological pressures.
Zuzana: Faye Castelow.
Dr Vilem Rieger: Geoffrey Beevers.
Irena: Carolyn Backhouse.
Monika: Paula Stockbridge.
Grandma: Auriol Smith.
Oswald: James Greene.
Victor: David Antrobus.
Hanus: Stuart Fox.
Dick/Constable: Mike Sengelow.
Bob/Constable: Paul O’Mahony.
Vlasta: Esther Ruth Elliott.
Albin: Christopher Naylor.
Knobloch: Philip Anthony.
Bea Weissenmutelhofova: Rebecca Pownall.
Patrick Klein: Robert Austin.
Authorial Voice: Vaclav Havel.
Director: Sam Walters.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
2008-10-18 11:16:28