Here's Your Future

REVIEW: Václav Havel's Leaving

by Mark Cofta

Jim Roese GUIDED BY VOICES: Playwright and former Czech President Vaclav Havel inserts himself into Leaving, occasionally freezing scenes to indulge in voiceovers that explain his "authorial whimsy."

Treat a classic like a new play and a new play like a classic, goes the old theater maxim. Václav Havel forces the issue with blatant allusions to Shakespeare's King Lear, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Beckett's Endgame in his first post-Czech presidency play, Leaving, receiving its American première at the Wilma Theater.

Leaving aspires to instant classic status with a huge cast and lofty musings about government and theater. David Strathairn gives a typically restrained performance as an unnamed country's outgoing chancellor, Vilém Rieger, a milquetoast reduced to sound bites by his controlling "longtime companion" Irena (Kathryn Meisle) for the one reporter who shows interest (Lenny Haas).

Rieger, perhaps a good chancellor, has become a befuddled platitude-spouting pushover who comes to life only when sycophant Bea (Mary McCool) flatters him into a woodshed quickie. He's Lear, The Cherry Orchard's Madame Ranyevskaya and Endgame's Hamm: toothless, oblivious and stuck in the past, even when the jackal, Klein (Trevor Long), forces him from his home. Since Rieger's retired when the play begins, the grim future already belongs to Klein.

More interesting is the world swirling around Rieger on Klara Zieglerova's stunning set of doors, doors and more doors, punctuated by occasional thunderstorms. Janis Dardaris plays his addled mother; Victoria Frings is his gadget-obsessed teenage daughter; and Jennifer R. Morris is his cold adult daughter who might as well pull her husband (Mark Cairns) on a leash. Luigi Sottile and Peter DeLaurier play professional assistants, and Geddeth Smith and H. Michael Walls are home workers. Most pragmatically save themselves, picking Rieger's bones clean, while Rieger serves them all.

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Havel insists that Leaving isn't autobiographical, and let's hope he's right; a play about Havel's struggles as an imprisoned playwright, cultural leader of Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring and his nation's first post-Soviet bloc leader would be much more interesting. He inserts himself in Leaving as The Voice, smoothly spoken by F. Murray Abraham, interrupting to explain his "authorial whimsy" and indulging in self-examination the way Rieger never does, but ought to. The device feels lazy, but we so appreciate the wit and introspection that we're willing to forgive.

A playwright doesn't create a classic just by referencing other classics, however, even if he is one of life's genuine heroes.

Through June 20, $36-$65, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org.