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Dateline: 29th January, 2006
Havel Scottish Premiere at Perth Unnecessary red tape, power games, abbreviations and acronyms are some of the ingredients in Scotland’s first showing of Vaclav Havel's The Memorandum which opens in Perth on 2nd February. Communicado in association with Perth Theatre presents the ultimate off-the-wall, anarchic office comedy starring one of Scotland’s finest actors Gerry Mulgrew (who starred in the recent critically acclaimed Ubu the King at Dundee Rep). Gerry plays company boss Josef Gross who is managing director of an organisation knee-deep in bureaucracy. He arrives in the office one morning to discover his deputy has introduced an artificial language called ‘Ptydepe’ in an attempt to streamline communication between employees. Of course, it only succeeds in making things worse. The farcical situation is taken to hilarious levels as staff members seek to undermine each other by using changing bureaucratic procedures to get their way. In Havel’s play, which was written in communist Czechsolovakia, office politics are taken to the extreme. Nothing can be done without the right forms being signed; no signatures can be given out without the appropriate permission granted and so on. The vicious circle continues and soon even the Managing Director, Gross himself, doesn’t seem to have a leg to stand on. The audience will perhaps recognise the similarities between Havel’s excessive office politics and those practiced in their own workplace. However, the parallels stretch even further and the signs of madness he identifies are present in politics today. “We are living in an era which is controlled by the language of ‘Spin’,” says The Memorandum director, Gerda Stevenson. “This play is therefore is as relevant as ever. New men emerge as leaders and maintain their positions by imposing a new language, which only they can manipulate and understand.” Havel opposed the communist regime, was arrested several times and imprisoned twice for his beliefs. He eventually became President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the new Czech Republic. The Memorandum represents Havel’s own assertion that the theatre is always about politics. That is not to say ‘political’, in the sense of supporting this or that ideology, but that it is concerned with examining the way in which human beings relate to each other by power, or the lack of it. The Memorandum runs at Perth Theatre from 2nd (preview) until 18th February. Tickets are£9.50 - £15.50, with concessions (inlcuding children) £5.50. The Tour
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