Largo Desolato
Reviewed by Emily Hawkins
City Garage Theatre
Through March 1
He’s waiting for something. That’s what we know. An anxious apprehension plagues Professor Leopold Nettles (Troy Dunn) as the lights rise on City Garage’s pertinent-to-our-time production of Václav Havel’s play Largo Desolato, translated by Tom Stoppard.
Havel was released from prison in Czechoslovakia in 1984 and hastily wrote this play in a matter of four days. Its urgency and fear remain prominent in Frédérique Michel’s adaption, as the audience observes the Professor circling his apartment, downing medication, and checking the peephole for his impending visitors. A professor of political philosophy, he’s caught in that ever-relevant human conundrum, to choose bravery or safety. The professor had never intended for his poignant works to get him into to trouble, but they have. Now, struggling to live up to the momentum of his “greatness,” he is forced to confront the power of his words through the throngs of visitors that come through his door.
Unfortunately, the potential of this carefully constructed script is not fulfilled. Anthony Sannazzaro and Aaron Bray struggle to embody their roles as clowns of the Beckett and Pinter variety. Their performances as the Two Sidneys, who wish to motivate Leopold to lead a revolutionary movement through his writing, are too similar to their portrayals of members of the secret police, who entice the professor to disown his influential “Ontology of the Human Self.” None of the other performers display the specificity required to perform convincingly within this absurdist style either.
As Professor Leopold, however, Dunn captures the nuanced characteristics of the paranoid man who clutches a pillow in fear, while speculating on the human need for love. His apartment, which he hasn’t left in months, is a bit anachronistic given the 1980s world we’ve entered. Designed by Charles Duncombe in a Frank Lloyd Wright art deco style, its vibrant colors and sparse décor seems of another time, while Josephine Poinsot’s costumes are noticeably uncomfortable and disjointed.
Whatever the shortcomings of the production, the play itself speaks to our present obsession with “fake news” and our constant fear for our privacy. Havel struggled to accept the importance his words held for those who leaned on them during the troubled times of the Cold War; it might startle him to learn that they have transcended time and are still relevant.
City Garage Theatre at Bergamot Station, T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Mar. 1. www.citygarage.org. Running time: one hour and 45 minutes with an intermission.
