HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT - 5 Plays by Havel, Pinter and Beckett

L-R: Michael Laurence and David Barlow in AUDIENCE by Vaclav Havel, part of HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

Vaclav Havel will not only be remembered as a remarkably talented Czechoslovakian poet and playwright but, even more importantly, as the political dissident most responsible for challenging Czechoslovakia’s Communist dictatorship.  During his lifetime, all of Havel ’s works were banned in Czechoslovakia and Havel himself was imprisoned for four years but the playwright ultimately prevailed, contributing to the overthrow of his country’s Communist government, becoming its first freely elected President and, subsequent to the separation of the Czech Republic from Slovakia, becoming the President of the Czech Republic as well. 

Perhaps most noteworthy among Havel’s works are what have come to be known as “the Vanek plays,” one act autobiographical plays in which the protagonist, Ferdinand Vanek, a stand-in for Havel himself, seeks to “live in truth,” refusing to make even small compromises with what he perceives to be a fundamentally dishonest system, lest such compromises ultimately lead to the most insufferably evil consequences.

Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC), was founded in 1987 and moved to New York in 2007.  This year, in association with Middlebury College, it is staging a limited engagement of works by Vaclav Havel, Harold, Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Tom Stoppard at The Atlantic Stage 2 on West 16th Street in downtown Manhattan.  One half of the season’s program, Havel: The Passion of Thought, is devoted to three of Havel’s “Vanek plays” – Audience, Private View, and Protest – bookended by Pinter’s The New World Order as a prologue to Havel’s works and Beckett’s Catastrophe (which actually was written in tribute to Havel) as an epilogue to them.  The other half of the repertory season showcases Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth.

In all three of the “Vanek plays,” David Barlow plays the role of Vanek and he is absolutely superb, beautifully conveying with understated elegance the tortuous moral dilemmas confronting not only Vanek himself but also those with whom he is in contact.  In Audience, Vanek is working at a brewery, the only job he can get without compromising his principles since his release from prison when it quickly becomes apparent to him that he is being spied upon by the authorities and pressured to betray himself.  Michael Laurence, who plays the Brewmaster pressuring him, is delightfully entertaining in his complex serio-comic role.

 

L-R: Christopher Marshall, David Barlow, and Emily Kron in PRIVATE VIEW, part of HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

In Private View, Vanek is invited to a private viewing of the newly re-furnished home of his friends Michael (Christopher Marshall) and Vera (Emily Kron).  In this, the zaniest and most slapstick of the three “Vanek plays,” Michael and Vera cannot seem to abide Vanek’s refusal to simply accept their conventional wisdom on everything from sex and family to cooking and home furnishing.  It is a highly amusing and telling example of how difficult it is for some people to accept that others don’t necessarily share their values on everything (nor should they) and they tell it with ribald gusto.

L-R: David Barlow and Danielle Skraastad in PROTEST, part ofpart of HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT.  Photo by Stan Barouh. 

In Protest (the very best of the three “Vanek plays”), Vanek confronts a much more difficult and complicated issue: Stanekova (Danielle Skraastad) is, like Vanek, another very talented writer but, unlike him, she is no dissident.  Rather, she has chosen to make her peace with the authorities, accepting their interference with her creative work in exchange for their granting her the opportunity to earn a good living as an approved writer for government-regulated television.  But does this necessarily mean that she is a sell-out or less principled than Vanek?  To his credit,  Havel has the intellectual integrity to deal with this issue head-on.  Might it not be the case that Stanekova’s willingness to compromise with the government and work behind the scenes in attempting to achieve greater freedom and better lives for all Czechoslovakians could actually prove to be more effective than Vanek’s own outright defiance?  And by absolutely refusing to compromise on anything, might Vanek really just be seeking to gratify his own ego?  Ms Skraastad does an outstanding job playing devil’s advocate to Vanek’s self-assurance.

Pinter’s The New World Order, in which an unidentified Man (David Barlow) is menaced in an interview room by Desmond and Lionel (Michael Laurence and Christopher Marshall), universalizes the issues evoked in the subsequent “Vanek plays” and enriches the overall production.  But I was somewhat disappointed in Beckett’s Catastrophe being tacked on as an epilogue.  At least one of the liberties taken with Beckett’s original script, the substitution of a request for a drink rather than the relighting of a cigar, may have seemed inconsequential but it did make a difference and not for the better.

Notwithstanding that minor nit-pick, Havel: The Passion of Thought is an outstanding production and well worth seeing.  (I haven’t yet seen PTP/NYC’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth but I’m certainly looking forward to it.  If it is anywhere near as good as Havel: The Passion of Thought, you’ll be reading another positive review from me very soon.)