(*1936)
List of plays:
Arrest
Sanitární noc
Hodinový hoteliér
Supermanka
Případ vesnického policajta
Protentokrát zbohatnem
Böhmen und Möhren Cup
Objížďka
Translated plays:
V ETOT RAZ RAZBOGATEJEM (PROTENTOKRÁT SBOHATNEM)
24 men, 8 women
Translated into Russian.
ARREST (AREST)
A one act play
7 men
As its title indicates, this contribution to the collective Vanek saga of the dissident playwrights of the 70s takes place in prison, a place familiar to both Vanek the writer (here without doubt a direct and affectionate protrait of Landovsky´s friend Vaclav Havel) and to the author himself.
Vanek is transferred to a new cell, where getting to know the other inmates leads to conflict. Even amongst the prisoners there are people whom communist propaganda has turned into terrorized idionts. One of them asks to be transferred into another cell, so as not to be suspected of fraternizing with the politically suspect Vanek. The absurd atmosphere is completed by echoes of a prison revolt which penetrate the cell from outside. It transpires that a major war film is being shot in an authentic location. The former notorious prison of the Prague Gestapo is the same as the Communist „institute of correction" ath the ent of the 1970s.
Translated into German and English.
CLEANING NIGHT / WEGEN DESINFEKTION GESCHLOSSEN (SANITÁRNÍ NOC)
20 men, 6 women
a theatrical curiosity in two parts: a beginning, an intervala and an end, taking place in the early 1980s.
The first version of this comedy was the „birhplace" of the dissident Vanek, and it was from here that Vaclav Havel, Pavel Kohout and others borrowed him to create their dramatic alter egos in the Vanek plays of the 70s and 80s. Cleaning Night reflects the schizophrenic atmosphere of the post-1968 „normalisation" years in a mad comedy. When a cerain pub has a cleaning night, it creates an enclave of freedom. It is closed, the bugging devices are switched off, and the pub´s staff, composed of people who formerly worked in all kinds of professions from which they are now banned, together with their customers, who include the banned writer Vanek, get ready for a good evening. However, an unforeseen complacation arises. One floor up, a heart attack strikes a man as hi si out philandering. He turns out to be no less than a Communist Party minister. As attempts are made to save the minister´s life and reputation, the clashof two worlds provides a rewarding comic situation.
Translated into German.
THE HOTELIER / STUNDENHOTELIER / OTĚL NA ČAS (HODINOVY HOTELIER)
3 men, 1 women
Landovsky´s best-known play, which suddenly made perhaps the most popular actor of the late 1960s into one of the most-performed playwrights. Part of the original repertoire of the Cinoherni klub in Prague during iths most famous era, it is an outstanding opportinity for four actors. The permanent housing crisis characteristic of Communism brings together, on one evening ing the same flat, its owner, an old man who has clearly seen better days, a night-porter of the same age whom the Chech university of life has given many qualities useful for survival in all conditions, a young girla and her passionate, if marreid, lover. The old man rents out his flat to the lovers for meetings, while the night-porter comes to warm himself boht at the stove and at the lives of others, since, clearly through excess caution, he has not been able to fully develop his own. Both old men are then witness to the young lovers´ final breakup...
Translated into Russian and German.
SUPERWOMAN (SUPERMANKA)
4 men, 2 women
Inspired, according to the author, by „Jiri Mucha, his house and his libertine lifestyle", the play´s manin character is female - an ageing, completely sexually emancipated „superwoman", who has no inhibitions or scruples when it comes to satisfying her own needs and whims. It is also a diverting record of her clashes with the male world.
Translated into German.
THE VILLAGE POLICEMEN INVESTIGATES / ARMENHAUS oder EIN FALL FÜR DEN DORFPOLIZISTEN (PRIPAD VESNICKEHO POLICAJTA)
7 men, 3 women
This lightly dectectiva play takes place int the „poorhouse", as the small old peoples´ home is called by the inhabitants of a Czech village somtime int the 1960s. One of its more unusual inmates, the Slovak Jew Mr. Kurtz, has a passion for justice which leads him to bear the guilt for the „rash act" of a young deserter, when he writes the young man on military service long letters describing the misbehaviour of his girlfriend.
The presence of the local representative of the secret police, Mr. Vovsik, investigating the temporary disappeareance of Mr. Kurtz and of a young woman, a former ward sister who recognises a condemned Slovak fascist among the management of the home, brings further details of the home´s inhabitants and staff on to the stage. The end of the play shows the athor´s lack of belief in absolute truth and justice and his distrust of their staunch advocates.
Translated into English and German.