Review: In Marionette Production of Havel's "Audience," It's a Question of Who's Pulling the Strings
Audience Written by Vaclav Havel Translated and directed by Vít Hořejš Presented by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre at Bohemian National Hall , Manhattan, NYC June 23 and 29, 2021 L to R: Theresa Linnihan as The Brewmaster, Vít Hořejš as Vanek. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. There is an irony to the title of Vaclav Havel's 1975 one-act play Audience —one tends to think of being granted or summoned to an audience with some elite personage rather than a brewery worker—just as there is some irony to staging with marionettes a play in which one character is being puppeteered, as it were, to try to gain a form of control over another. There is also, though it might sound strange for a play about omnipresent surveillance under an oppressive Communist regime, a tremendous amount of fun in this production by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT), presented as part of the 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Vaclav Havel. The comedic Audience —preceded ...
