Word: havelent
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...Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater recently garnered acclaim for being the first Boston theater troupe to stage any work by playwright Vaclav Havel since his election as Czech president. While the selection of Increased Difficulty of Concentration is indubitably indicative of the group's political savvy, it is even more indicative of its good taste...
...work is fast, funny and damnably clever. Set behind the Iron Curtain in 1968, Increased Difficulty of Concentration, plays game with perception, chronology and language, and is classic theater of the absurd. The simple repitition of dialogues, even entire scenes, lends Havel's glimpse behind the curtain an acuity. The work is frequently and charmingly inscrutable; there are several inexplicable and subtle wardrobe changes between scenes...
...Havel's creative script is not wasted on director Orion Ross. Ross molds the play into a dimension not only of sight, but of sound. The play opens with China Forbes off-stage, singing in her clear, strong, beautiful voice, while John Ducey and Blake Spraggins bumble about in pantomime as social scientists Karel Kriebl and Emil Machal. And in the first true scene, Ross creates a breakfast interlude in which the clanking of silverware, plates and glasses speak as much as the characters at the table...
What is truly frightening is that Havel intends Vlasta to speak for all of womankind, and for all of womankind to speak for Vlasta. Much of the humor of the work lies in Havel's recycling women's dialogue. The playwright has Huml's wife and mistress share catty, stereotypical lines. Forbes is a little flat as Vlasta, but Martin displays some nice comic timing as Renata...
Like the fish, we are being jollied along. The social scientists call their work an investigation of "man in the round," and though Havel's work is circuitous and full, a more appropriate metaphor might be "man on a merry-go-round." We should all thank Ross for the ride...