Vaclav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig

Any theatre company savvy enough to bribe the audience with treats is already on my sunny side. At Untitled Theatre Company’s #61 The Pig, or Vaclav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig, the playing space at 3LD is converted into a Czech social hall, where our post 9-to-5 tensions are massaged away with music (in last night’s case, the highly awesome Short Stride Clyde and the 5 Brothers Fat, whose Cory Einbinder recently played washboard with us in Jasper Jaxon), as well as sandwiches (most of them containing pulled pork, the significance of which will be readily apparent), Czech beer, and a wide variety of exotic pretzels and candy (hawked by Yvonne Roen in traditional folk costume) . It puts us in a festive mood – - an irony, as it is the act of preparing for a feast that is about to drive Vaclav Havel mad.

Rather magically, a large number of the people mingling among us start to sing. The music is from the 1866 operetta The Bartered Bride by Bedrich Smetana, a work which program notes inform us is of enormous national significance to Czechs. Yet, the producers would be mistaken in thinking Americans do not already know this memorable music. I recognized its main themes instantly as that played by the brass band (time and time again) in the 1957 Warner Brothers Cartoon Piker’s Peak starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam:

Its use in the current piece is somewhat more loaded. A kind of aesthetic Declaration of Independence in its day, it was initially mashed up with Havel’s 1987 political humor piece by Czech director Vladimir Moravek and presented at a theatre festival last summer. Edward Einhorn (the force behind the Havel Festival in 2006) has adapted the piece for American audiences, with assistance from dramaturg Karen Ott and translator Katerina Lu. The complicated production, literally orchestrated by Henry Akona, engages a small chamber orchestra, a cast of about a dozen (most of whom are opera singers, a couple of whom double as musicians); passages of folk dance choreographed by Patrice Miller; and live video projected onto several large screens, with period-accurate late Cold War news crawls superimposed over the shots.

But what’s it all about? It’s one of Havel’s humorous nightmares, the sort that starts out as political satire but in the end reaches the level of existentialism or absurdism. It’s simply an anecdote about his ridiculous tribulations in attempting to buy a pig for a traditional Czech feast in the country’s dysfunctional economy. The pendulum swings between vague assurances of success in his dealings with unscrupulous villagers, and the inevitable betrayals and setbacks, are remarkably similar to the travails of, well, Yosemite Sam trying to climb the “Shmatterhorn”…or waiting until the fourth paragraph of a review to learn what the play is about.

The Brick’s Robert Honeywell is well cast as the dry, professorial and understated Havel (aside from the lack of mustache and chain-smoking) and he infuses his turn wherever he can with subtle clown elements. Katherine Boynton plays the clueless American reporter whose on-camera interview prompts the tale (which adds to the absurdity — this is quite a long shaggy dog story to present on television, where every second costs thousands and thousands of kronkites. If you don’t recognize that denomination, I refer you to the above cartoon).

The true genius of the piece struck me as this: on the one hand, the ditzy reporter avoids questions about real politics with an important political and cultural figure in favor of this silly anecdote…but the anecdote ends up being devastatingly eloquent about the political and economic situation in the country at the time. Subversion is the lingua franca of the dissident artist. In this respect, Havel seems just a whisper away from Sartre. Sartre + Ionesco = Havel? A simplistic formulation perhaps, but then I too am just a clueless American reporter.

You have two more chances (tonight and tomorrow) to catch this amazing (and very unique) production in Soho Think Tank’s Ice Factory. To find out how, go here.