One home run, one single,
at Allens Lane Theater

The best works of Franz Kafka are typically anxiety-producing tales rife with grotesque characters struggling against the rules and values of a rigid society. Václav Havel, playwright and one-time president of Czechoslovakia, attempts to emulate Kafka’s style in his one-acts, Audience and Unveiling. However, in director Jonathan Carr’s production at the Allens Lane Theater, only Unveiling approaches the level of the great German writer’s work.

Audience, which takes place in the Foreman’s office of a dank, cold brewery, doesn’t so much provoke anxiety as it does aggravation. Essentially an absurd, circuitous dance of words in which the Foreman (lary moten) emphatically takes the lead, the play is Czechoslovakia’s version of Philadelphia’s pay-to-play politics, except that in Havel’s plays, politics affects every aspect of civilian life.

Miserable in his grey, lifeless existence, the Foreman insists that Van_k join him in his prison of despair. It’s an absurd and desperate situation, but moten’s unsure portrayal thwarts the play’s repetitive rhythms and subversive power. It’s not that moten is a bad actor, or wrong for the role. The night I attended he simply didn’t seem to know his lines. (It’s noted in the play’s program that the actor is concurrently performing in a production at the New York Café Theater in Germantown.)

Carr’s disciplined direction is insightful, and Gribben’s quiet, hesitant performance is adept at showing the level of repression exerted by the government, but moten’s handicap makes the production feel unsure and disjointed.

Luckily, the second play of the evening’s double-bill is a huge improvement, and it’s not just because the three actors know their parts and play them superbly.

The antithesis of Audience, in which the Foreman verbally attacks the intellectual Van_k for not being one of the beer-soaked workers, in Unveiling it is the soulless elite that rebuke Van_k for his individualism.

Seemingly worlds away from the dingy brewery, Unveiling’s action takes place in the well-manicured home of Vera (Kristyn Chouiniere) and Michael (David Stanger). Inviting Van_k over to unveil their dream home’s new décor, the couple talk endlessly about how rewarding their life is together. They insist Van_k follow their example and live a “decent, healthy, rational life.”

Yet for all their talk about the wonders of having a child, their sexual attraction for each other and the beauty of their home (smartly imagined rather than realized in Travis A. Whitaker’s spare scenic design), their lives are hopelessly, frighteningly empty. Robbed of their identity, they like Audience’s Foreman, resent Van_k and his “commie friends” for their non-conformity.

Although both plays are clearly referring to the Communist regime that controlled Czechoslovakia following WWII (both were written in 1975, 14 years before Havel became president of the Czech Republic), their themes are universal. Forced to conform to the extent where their humanity has been reduced to a series of artificial gestures, the characters are desperately trying to fill their lives with alcohol or material goods. It is a danger not only faced by the nations of Eastern Europe, but by any country that puts national interests before the concerns of its citizens.

The two one-act plays will be performed through December 6. Admission is $12. The theater is at Allens Lane and McCallum Street. For more information, call 215-248-0546 or visit www.allenslane.org.