TV REVIEW : Havel’s Journey From Playwright to President

Followers of the changing fortunes of Czech playwright-President Vaclav Havel have an opportunity to taste his literary wares and watch his transformation from dissident writer to leader of his country tonight on PBS.

A performance of his play “Largo Desolato,” capped by a documentary, “Havel’s Audience With History,” offer a comprehensive sense of the private man. The play airs at 9 p.m. on Channels 15 and 24 and at 9:30 p.m. on Channel 28; the documentary follows at 10:30 p.m. on Channels 15 and 24 and at 11 p.m. on Channel 28.

“Largo Desolato” (a production of which played the Taper, Too in 1987, winning several Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards) is a tragicomedy wherein a dissident writer, Leopold Nettles, is trapped in his apartment as much by his own fears as by the real danger that his writings have placed him in with the authorities. Much of the dialogue spoken by Nettles (F. Murray Abraham) reflects Havel’s own thoughts and anguish during the years of severe Czech repression.

This American production is slightly overstated (the characters tend to be stereotyped in a staging that speaks the lines but lacks the subtler European sensibility). Abraham is more hollow than bewildered as the Woody Allenish Havel figure. Only the wistful Sally Kirkland is totally credible as one of the women in his life.

“Havel’s Audience with History,” on the other hand, is an engrossing chronicle that focuses squarely on Havel’s extraordinary blossoming. After taking us through his confirmation as his country’s president (no one more astounded by it than Havel), we are gradually introduced to the inner man through the eyes of co-workers, friends, other artists, his wife and his former classmate, film director Milos Forman.

We visit the prison cell where Havel was repeatedly detained (and hear prison officials commend his discipline and talk of the respect they bore him). We visit his country house (to which he was exiled at various times) and the modest Prague apartment he still shares today with his wife, Olga.

Best of all, we watch the audience watching Havel watching the first performance of a play of his in his native land. The play, “Audience,” was inspired by his days of forced employment at a brewery and the moral stand that he was forced to adopt even then.

Scenes from the Czech production are pointlessly intercut with the same scenes from an Actors’ Studio version featuring Kevin O’Connor and Lou Brockway. It only serves to show up the Americans, who come across as broad and shallow next to the dry, understated isometrics of the Czechs.

The piece ends on Havel himself, revealed as a man of gentle wit and dignity. In a delicious exchange with Czech actor and friend Pavel Landovsky, the latter apologizes for not having had the time to properly learn his lines. Replies Havel, counting slyly on his fingers, “You had 14 years.”

It takes about 14 minutes to understand why the Czechs chose this special man to lead them.