Customer Reviews

Largo Desolato

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This absurd play is both funny and tragic at the same time. Professor Leopold Nettles is about to be arrested for an article he wrote, and no one connected with him seems to be overly concerned. Instead, everyone he knows, and some absolute strangers, keep busy trying to make him into what they want. At one point he is given the opportunity to deny that he was the author of the article, which leads to some fascinating thoughts on the questions of identity, self-worth, and integrity. The play causes the reader to reflect on his or her beliefs about these things; it also serves as good insight into life under a communist regime.

All life in a police state is interesting, probably corrupt and potentially subversive as portrayed in this absurdist but seemingly autobiographical play by Czech playwright Vaclav Havel.

As in Phoenix, to cite an example, police don't care about guilt, innocence, justice or mercy. If anyone is accused of a crime, they want a conviction. In Havel's play, Professor Leopold Nettles is charged with "disturbing the intellectual peace."

Only in a police state could anyone invent such a wide-ranging crime. In Phoenix, conviction means a fine. In Havel's play, a conviction may mean an indeterminate sentence in semi-starved misery in a distant gulag. Once suspected, Leopold knows he's guilty in the eyes of the state. The play portrays a variety of people who visit him, proud that he speaks up in defiance of the authorities - - - but unwilling to join him in his stand for intellectual freedom.

Leopold, like Havel for much of his life, is utterly alone.

But who are the well-wishers who applaud his dissidence? Are they friends, or secret police agents as provocateurs? Two police agents who visit offer a clever means to avoid prosecution; in effect, "just agree to our falsehoods and all charges will go away." Really? A trap? Are the police undermining the government they serve? How can anyone trust anything?

Such is the nature of 'Largo Desolato' and life in a police state. Anything said, done or suspected can be used in a secret hearing. Anyone can be an informant; as seen when the Stasi files were opened. Survival means never having an original thought, never a question, never a doubt about the regime, and never a friend. Even silence may be suspicious. No one, nothing, can be trusted. Freedom is imprisoned in one's mind more rigorously than a body in any dungeon.

A police state turns a even a soft knock on the door into a thunder of fear, doubt, suspicion and mistrust. Havel expresses it well, because Havel lived it and writes of that which he knows. This is a beautiful play about a frightening reality.