Word: blanka
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...When Elizabeth Costello commands Paul to "push the mortal envelope," he tries to oblige, virtually adopting Marijana's teenage son Drago and rescuing his sister Blanka from a brush with the law. But it's the pull to her push that gives the book its arresting comic edge. Like "scrupulous doubter" Coetzee himself, Paul doesn't totally believe in the merits of his tale: "I am not a hero, Mrs. Costello." The lady, of course, won't have a bar of it. She exhorts Paul to be a fictional hare rather than a tortoise: "Don Quixote is not about...
Huml gives Vlasta and Renata the same smug equivocations, displaying a strong attachment to neither character. But later, Huml attacks his secretary Blanka (Agnes Dunogue '98) in an explosion of sexual frustration. All this culminates in a dream-like scene in which the three women perform a dance around Huml. According to this production of the play, much of Huml's problem lies in his inability to choose a stable life and experience genuine love...
Some of the play's other thematic concerns--like Huml's grappling with human values--get pushed aside by this interpretative choice. The meaninglessness of the book on social theory which Huml dictates to Blanka is a vicious joke. Huml, in numerous monologues, carries on with a long string of empty statements: "Various people have at various times and in various circumstances various needs...and thus attach to various things various values." But because this production uses Huml's professional musings as nothing more than a gag, they quickly become tiresome...
Hopkin's Huml is not a man of great introspection. As Dr. Balcar (Lyra O. Barrera) says of Pazook, "He doesn't know what's going on inside him." He is most chipper when he abuses his wife, Vlasta (Forbes), his mistress, Renata (Bina Martin), or his secretary, Blanka (Magda Hernandez). Witness the scene when, without a flinch or trace of anger, he asks Vlasta, "Will you stop speaking for all womankind and see about starting dinner...
Shadrin's Polish-born wife Blanka, however, is accusing the FBI of bungling his Vienna mission, then abandoning a loyal American to his fate. The White House has declared that the U.S. is trying to obtain information about Shadrin, a U.S. citizen. But a top State Department official said that Washington could not be expected to give Shadrin's disappearance high priority in U.S.-Soviet relations. After all, he observed, anyone who becomes an agent, especially a double agent, is playing a perilous game-and knows...