Vaclav Havel's "Leaving' at the Wilma (1st review)

Leaving is a laugh-out-loud funny and entertaining play— not what many of us expected from the de facto father and longtime president of the Czech Republic.

It's hardly a serious exploration of what happens when a statesman leaves office— which is what I was led to expect by its advertising as well as a comment by the playwright himself on National Public Radio. The playwright spoke of it as a tragedy and the theater's posters call it a "tragicomedy."

But this is farce, not tragedy. It makes a serious point when it shows the similarities between political opponents. Regimes change, but everyone talks about empowering "the individual" and cutting taxes. (Havel seems to have had a premonition about how Obama would continue some of the Bush policies that he previously criticized.) And those close to power expeditiously shift allegiances when regimes change.

But Leaving doesn't take itself seriously. One example is the way Havel's voice (supplied by F. Murray Abraham) interrupts the story to instruct the actors and utter explanations to the audience.

A casual theatergoer might suspect that Havel based this play on his own life, but that isn't true. We know so because Havel wrote most of the play before the fall of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989, and way before he became president of the Czech Republic in 1993. More important, the central character is a parody of fatuousness, quite unlike Havel himself, the shining ideal of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution.

Weak and deluded

Our sympathies lie with the protagonist Vilem Rieger, the ex-chancellor of an unnamed country, because of Havel's personal story and because David Strathairn plays him with benevolence. But it soon becomes clear that the character is weak and harbors ludicrous delusions about his historic legacy— a wicked satire of world leaders.

This ex-chancellor is vain and prone to name-dropping. He talks about his conversations with Tony Blair or Chiang Kai Shek; at one point he mentions something that "Havel" told him.

Those who surround Rieger are even less lovable. His "long-time companion" is a sexy blonde, now approaching middle age, who is bossy and controlling. Kathryn Meisle is superb in this difficult assignment.

A young female admirer of Rieger's speeches, portrayed by Mary McCool, is transparently a celebrity stalker. The chancellor's mother wants to remain as the power behind the throne. She is played by Janis Dardaris, who hides her attractiveness remarkably well.

The other members of the entourage are such ineffectual bumblers that one wonders how Rieger stayed in office so long.

Clever writing

King Lear is clearly paralleled when Rieger's daughter invites the ex-ruler to live with her, then changes her mind because it would be inconvenient. Then Rieger is caught in a storm, where he howls like Lear until he's shown a makeshift refuge, which he calls a "hovel." This is clever writing for those in the know. But wit is the salt of talk, not the food.

The plot revolves around the ex-chancellor's eviction from his state-owned villa. But Havel's narrative goes off on tangents that he never fully develops:

There's a damning file that Rieger wants to burn. And an interrogation by the police. A bust of Mahatma Gandhi ("Indira gave it to me") makes recurring appearances, but its point is obscure. Likewise, the chancellor's vacuous younger daughter is more mysterious than revealing. Rieger takes with him some items that belong to the state and we think he's going to get in trouble because of that, but then that topic disappears.

A tabloid reporter and his cameraman are devastatingly portrayed by Leonard C. Haas and Mike Dees. They represent the worst side of journalism. It's puzzling, though, why they're the only journalists attending an ex-chancellor's conference right after he left office.

The last part of Leaving becomes absurdist. It's spectacularly staged by Jiri Zizka, who grew up attending Havel's plays in Czechoslovakia. He manages the large cast extremely well.♦


To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here..
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read a related commentary by AJ Sabatini, click here.