Word: havelent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...MEMORANDUM. Director Joseph Papp introduces Czech Playwright Vaclav Havel to the U.S. with this wacky and pointed satire on bureaucracy and its bombast. Robert Ronan is pluperfect as the prissy pedant of Ptydepe, an artificial office language in which "ah" becomes "zukybaj," "ouch" becomes "bykur," "oh" becomes "hayf dy doretob...
...MEMORANDUM. Director Joseph Papp introduces Czech Playwright Vaclav Havel to the U.S. with this wacky and pointed satire on bureaucracy and its bombast. Robert Ronan is pluperfect as the prissy pedant of Ptydepe, an artificial office language in which "ah" becomes "zukybaj," "ouch" becomes "bykur," "oh" becomes "hayf dy doretob...
...Memorandum was written in 1965 by Vaclav Havel, 33, one of Czechoslovakia's leading playwrights. As a satirist, Havel is fortunate to have the doctrinaire rigidities of a Communist society as a mockable target. Memorandum, first produced at Prague's Balustrade Theater, is a witty evisceration of the absurdities of party-line orthodoxy and bureaucratic musical chairs. But no audience need live in a Commu nist country to feel the tickle of Havel's barbs-it is enough to have experienced alienation in the midst of a scientific, computerized society. His main target is the mechanization...
Biting Satire. These days, Czechoslovakia's writers specialize in biting satire on Communist bureaucracy. Their work is in the tradition of Kafka and Karel Capek, whose play R.U.R. first introduced the concept of a robot. In The Memorandum, a popular play by Vaclav Havel, the main character gets an important memorandum in an impenetrable official language; in order to get permission to learn the language, he must first write a petition in it. One of the biggest hits of the Prague theater season, The Labyrinth by Ladislav Smoček, shows men imprisoned in a maze of park pathways...
...Vopos, who have been known to look the other way during an escape, the Saxons shoot to kill without a second thought. Even so, an average of ten East Germans a day leap, crawl, dig or swim their way to freedom. One couple even floated its infant across the Havel River in a bathtub. Since the Wall went up a year ago, 12.000 refugees have made it safely out of the Soviet zone; 49 who tried to reach West Berlin have died...