THE INCREASED DIFFICULTY OF CONCENTRATION. To 2 August.
London
THE INCREASED DIFFICULTY OF CONCENTRATION
by Vaclav Havel translated by Vera Blackwell
Gate Theatre To 2 August 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm no performance 19 July Sun 20 July 6pm
Runs 1hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7229 0706
boxoffice@gatetheatre.freeserve.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 July 2003
Lively production of Havel's comedy of an absurd society with strong female playing.Time's brought an increased difficulty of placing dissident playwright (as he then was) Vaclav Havel's portrait of social scientist Edward Huml. In 1968's Prague Spring of independent voices raised against Soviet domination, Huml's thoughts on man's spirit being undefinable by (Marxist?) science might have seemed heroic.
Even then he surely seemed as he does in today's apolitical consciousness unsympathetically smooth. Within his apartment the recession in Andy Edwards' narrowing set emphasising the 4 doors leading into the living-room his life's compartmentalised between wife (Cate Hamer gives her a resigned disappointment) and lover (Catherine Cusack forcefully demanding Huml carry through the promised split with Vlasta).
Add a couple of assaults on his unwilling secretary and an impromptu canoodle with the leader of a mysterious scientific team who arrive with some proto-computer type personality test, and the plausibly attractive Dr Eduard becomes a different, less desirable, human commodity.
The general disorientation of the world invading Huml's living-space (an invasion internally as well as externally created) is increased by Havel's time-warps. Early on, things grow crazier as wife (obviously), then lover (reasonably) and psycho-team (perplexingly) parade into the room a foretaste of the moment when the lot enter simultaneously, speaking each others' words in Huml's near breakdown.
As things progress, time shifts back, giving prequels to previously inexplicable incidents. Such devices have become much more popularly familiar since 1968 the tendency that's blanded-out 'surrealism' to mean anything unrealistic.
This still leaves features that Theatre on the Balustrrade audiences would have picked out; like team-boss Beck, a mackintosh-wrapped apparatchik who serves no function, inspires dutiful respect and wants to go fishing.
Simon Godwin's mood-temperature controlled, calm yet brisk-paced production rightly leaves Havel's script to provide the unexpected, everyone playing with the seriousness of people going about perfectly ordinary business. Only the music complacent intro. bandstand oom-pah giving way to distortions and bell-buzzer interventions overtly echoes the mood.
Acting is variable but efficient. Martin Wenner's Huml is occasionally over-deliberate, but gives a string sense both of the character's moral dubiety and the mental confusion of someone attempting, Jumpers-wise, to order his thoughts for publication.
Dr Eduard Huml: Martin Wenner
Vlasta Huml: Cate Hamer
Renata: Catherine Cusack
Blanka: Jo Theaker
Dr Anna Balcar: Katherine Parkinson
Karel Kriebel: Adam Morris
Machal: Neil Haigh
Mr Beck: Stephen Boswell
The voice of Puzuk: James Fox
Director: Simon Godwin
Designer: Andy Edwards
Lighting: Flick Ansell
Sound/Composer: Adrienne Quartly
2003-07-14 13:22:14