Reviews of The Garden Party by

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:10:22 UTC

Take a public life rendered meaningless by dialectical materialist nonsense, add to it all the fears and lies that invade the private spaces between the characters’ ears, and you have a play that not only marks an era but has a life in it that is still to be relished.

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:10:34 UTC

important reminder of the difficult times Czechoslovakia and many other European countries were experiencing in the mid-sixties. It is an exposition of the competing ideologies of East and West: bureaucratic and illiberal communism on the one hand, and bourgeois capitalism, a bleak alternative, and equally devoid of spiritual and human content, on the other.

2024-10-09 12:10:41 UTC

Havel wove a web of misquotation, pseudo-proverb and bureaucratese into a consummate language of counter-Communist farce.

2024-10-09 12:10:47 UTC

he has metamorphosed into one of them.

2024-10-09 12:10:48 UTC

He has metamorphosed into a beaurocrat.

2024-10-09 12:10:48 UTC

2024-10-09 12:11:12 UTC

For Hugo, the elder son, life is a game of chess: a competition with winners and losers. Eventually he becomes 'chief liquidator of the liquidation office', a meaningless institution of a bureaucratic superstructure, and his parents consider he has made it in life.

riversidebookweek — 2024-10-09 12:11:27 UTC

misquotation, pseudo-proverb and bureaucratese

helenasejda — 2024-10-09 12:11:39 UTC

And public life is all about positions, as the chess board shows.

2024-10-09 12:11:53 UTC

The play is endlessly allusive and entertaining to those who can hear all the jokes.

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:12:09 UTC

The Comedy of Errors

2024-10-09 12:12:20 UTC

"ideological nonsense... I just don’t know a play that could ever properly make fun of it here, as Havel did there."

2024-10-09 12:12:37 UTC

The play is an important reminder of the difficult times Czechoslovakia and many other European countries were experiencing in the mid-sixties. It is an exposition of the competing ideologies of East and West: bureaucratic and illiberal communism on the one hand, and bourgeois capitalism, a bleak alternative, and equally devoid of spiritual and human content, on the other.

samuelhunt — 2024-10-09 12:12:42 UTC

When trying to represent our world, the performance loses meaning, and comes dangerously close to the intellectual self-indulgence it aims to criticise.

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:12:49 UTC

The play is endlessly allusive and entertaining to those who can hear all the jokes.

2024-10-09 12:13:07 UTC

What ensues is Hugo’s ability to quickly ingrain himself into the bureaucratic environment of the liquidation office

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:13:16 UTC

contemporary relevance to which it does not lend itself.

2024-10-09 12:13:25 UTC

Whilst I can appreciate the impact of this play - a daring critique of communist regimes and pseudo-intellectualism - upon the audience of its time, its effect upon us now is at times surprisingly different. When trying to represent our world, the performance loses meaning, and comes dangerously close to the intellectual self-indulgence it aims to criticise.

elishkagamick — 2024-10-09 12:13:58 UTC

exposes the nightmarish and stultifying effect of communist state bureaucracy.

samuelhunt — 2024-10-09 12:14:10 UTC

But the gestures, the speech rhythms and the sets told the story, and there were some terrific moments when fragments of Shakespeare broke through.

2024-10-09 12:14:11 UTC

havel le genius

helenasejda — 2024-10-09 12:14:19 UTC

Furthermore, it does not make for good theatre, being long-winded and lacking in humour or any relief

2024-10-09 12:16:26 UTC

Eventually he becomes 'chief liquidator of the liquidation office', a meaningless institution of a bureaucratic superstructure,