Leaving
Archa Theatre, Prague
With the theatre playing such a large role in the social and political history of the Czechs, it is no wonder that former president Václav Havel’s new play has a political theme. Nor is the subject surprising: a leading politician comes to the end of his term of office. The surprise is that Havel began work on Leaving in the 1980s, when he was still a dissident with the time to be a philosopher. In his 13 years as president he had no time for creative writing, and took the play out of the drawer comparatively recently. The join however is seamless, and one wonders how it would have developed in pre-velvet revolution conditions.
The play revolves around Dr Vilém Rieger, the former Chancellor of an unnamed country. In the early days of his retirement he is still surrounded by an attentive and deferential court, cosseted by his mother and his mistress Irena (Havel wrote the role for his wife to play), interviewed by the boulevard press, and courted by a female research student. Meanwhile, his secretary and his secretary’s secretary carry out an inventory to separate Rieger’s personal possessions from what belongs to the state — for he must, it emerges, vacate the government villa he regards as home.
The Deputy Prime Minister Klein loses no time in purchasing the villa from the government. (‘He already has five villas,’ muses Rieger, ‘What’s he need another one for?’) In place of an ‘unprofitable orchard’ Klein plans a ‘moderately large social and commercial centre’, with the coach house becoming a casino and the classical villa a ‘modern erotic entertainment club’ — or, as the press put it, ‘Deputy Prime Minister Klein intends to convert the former government villa into a place for use by the general public.’
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