Do3 - 15.4.2012: Havel's Largo Desolato.

[french frank]

It takes the death of a celebrated playwright, seemingly, to persuade the BBC to rummage in its drama archive for a suitable tribute.

Havel's Largo Desolato was premiered (in Bristol ) in Stoppard's version in 1986 and adapted for radio in 1987. Richard Briers stars as the dissident philosopher ground down by the weight of totalitarianism.

Michael Billington's intro should be interesting too.

[aeolium]

I'm looking forward to this. If there must be repeats, and we've had quite a lot of them lately, then let's have a really worthwhile one from the archives rather than something broadcast a year or less ago. My first encounter with Havel's work was when BBC2 put on several of his plays IIRC in the late 1970s, when Havel and Charter 77 had a lot of publicity. Since then I think some of his plays have been broadcast on R3 but not recently.

[Russ]

Played for laughs, almost Whitehall farce-style; Richard Briers is marvellous, but it's difficult to reconcile his Leopold character portrayal with that of being a serious kind of writer perceived to be a threat to the state, and he rarely rises above the level of a lucid Bertie Wooster. Narratively, in terms of how the other characters interact with Leopold, I thought the play owed much to Pinter's The Birthday Party, but with far less menace.

[aeolium]

Actually I thought there was a fair bit of menace particularly in the opening scenes, with the mounting sense of desperation and the fearful expectancy of the next ring of the doorbell and though there was a touch of the Wooster about Briers' performance he did convey the sense of being weighed down with the burden of other people's expectations of him, as well as the absurdity and horror of his situation. There was an echo of Ionesco's absurdist theatre in this production and surely Havel is in that tradition, especially evident during the cycles of repeated dialogue. I'm not sure if the comedy was deliberately emphasised in Stoppard's translation and I often get the sense when listening to or watching a Havel play that there are private and local references there that might only be picked up by someone familiar with the original language version. The least convincing part for me was the episode with the young student who seemed almost a caricature of a groupie (at least in this production). But overall I thought it was a well-acted and good production and well worth reviving.