MOUNTAIN HOTEL & AUDIENCE. To 6 December.
Richmond.
MOUNTAIN HOTEL & AUDIENCE
by Vaclav Havel translated by Jitka Martinovna (Mountain Hotel) , Carol Rocamora and Tomas Rychetsky (Audience).
Orange Tree Theatre
17-21 Nov 7.45pm Mat 22, 29 Nov, 6 Dec 11am, 20 Nov (+ post-show discussion) 20 Nov. 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 0208940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 November.
Comedies of anxiety rather than menace.
Of all Vaclav Havel’s plays about the crazed pettiness of Soviet-led despotism in Czechoslovakia, Mountain Hotel (1976, but only now receiving its British premiere at the author’s English home, the Orange Tree) is the one that might have pleased the bleary eye of a Communist censor.
Much of this 75-minute play could be a satire on the leisured bourgeoisie as they lie around, flirt or seek assignations with each other on the terrace of a suave hotel; a kind of East European Last Year in Marienbad. It uses a characteristic which the Orange Tree’s Havel autumn shows to be a technique in his work; the dislocation of reality by repeated, and eventually speeded up, patterns of action – two of the three ‘Vanek plays’ feature the device.
It’s varied here as a woman repeatedly claims to know a reluctant man, who’s then puzzled when she ceases to claim the acquaintance. An exquisitely made-up and pertly knowing maid flirts with two men, played as one character.
Only a couple of mysteriously official, and officious, intruders, whose appearances as the play proceeds fits the pattern of altered repetition, might have a more wakeful Censor batting his eyelids. Their cold manner offsets the anxieties under the luxurious surface of the warm hotel terrace with its apparent luxury and ease.
Sam Walters’ production admirably catches a frozen world where political oppression is a matter of unspoken confines and self-censorship. His cast are all immaculate in expressing the hopes, suppressed desperation and trivialities of a world where reality is determined by government edict.
In his three Vanek plays, Havel presents a kind of self-portrait in the dissident whose neutrality leads others to project their guilt onto him. Audience shows him interviewed by the Foreman in the brewery where Vanek’s been sent to work
Robert Austin reveals with awkward bluster that he needs Vanek to file reports on himself for the authorities. David Antrobus’s Vanek sits compliant and uncomplaining. Eventually it seems Vanek happily complies, but that’s not clear – as someone tells Havel/Vanek in another of these plays, in another part of the Orange Tree’s autumn repertoire.
Mounatin Hotel
Pechar: Paul O’Mahony
Tetz: Mike Sengelow.
Orlov: James Greene.
Kubik: Stuart Fox.
Rachel: Pauls Stockbridge.
Kotrba: David Antrobus.
Liza: Esther Ruth Elliott.
Pecharova: Rebecca Pownall.
Dlask: Philip Anthony.
Milena: Faye Castelow.
Kunc: Robert Austin.
Drasar: Jonathan Guy Lewis.
Kraus: Christopher Naylor.
Director: Sam Walters.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
Audience:
Foreman: Robert Austin.
Vanek: David Antrobus./
Director: Geoffrey Beevers.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
2008-11-17 16:08:41