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Seeking asylum

Divadlo Komedie pays homage to a mad poet

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 9th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Dobrý gives a bravura performance of Blatný as a psychotic genius.
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He shuffles on in a moth-bitten suit, dropping sweet wrappers and pencil shards from his overstuffed pockets. He slumps into a chair and pulls more detritus from his suit pockets to scatter on a table. In the middle of this pile, he finds a few cigarettes and matches, and blissfully loses himself in a fog of Benson and Hedges, all while under the observation of a prim, starched nurse.
Ivan Blatný, who spent most of his life institutionalized in British asylums after escaping from communist Czechoslovakia in 1948, is now considered one of the most significant Czech poets of the 20th century. After his flight to London, the communist mouth-piece, Rudé právo, referred to Blatný as “human refuse,” editorializing that his fate was to end up “in the rubbish.” And the apparatchik press might have had its wish, if not for that nurse.
Kabaret Ivan Blatný

When: Tuesday, May 15, at 7:30
Where: Divadlo Komedie
Tickets: 140–240 Kč, available through Ticketpro, Ticketstream and at the venue
Performed in Czech and English

Kabaret Ivan Blatný, Divadlo Komedie’s new musical theater piece, delves into Blatný’s life of lyric psychosis. Written and scored by the well-known Czech composer Miloš Orson Štědroň, and under the direction of Komedie’s resident genius, Jan Nebeský, Kabaret Ivan Blatný is a schizophrenic vaudeville — a “cabaret” in the true sense, in that it is wholly experimental.
“I have always been interested in fusing text with music,” Štědroň says. “And I’ve toyed with the idea of doing something with Blatný for years.”
The meeting of Blatný’s poetry with Štědroň’s music seems fated, as the composer’s childhood home in Brno abutted the garden of Blatný’s family’s estate. “I grew up looking out over his garden,” Štědroň says.
Blatný was already an established voice in Czechoslovak literature when he fled, as well as a friend and colleague to Jiří Kolář, Kamil Lhotak and the tragic poet Jiří Orten, with whom Blatný had a comical suicide pact. Still, Štědroň notes, “The communists did a good job of erasing him. It’s safe to say that Blatný is better known in Britain than here in the Czech Republic.”
Kabaret should help engender more enthusiasm for Blatný’s work, and Nebeský’s assertive aesthetic seems perfect for the task. His provocative deconstructionist approach is not to everyone’s taste; the productions often churn with what critic Jarka Burian negatively called his “private Freudo-surrealistic perceptions.” Yet it works here.
Kabaret Ivan Blatný is a masterpiece of stylized chaos, a piece of performance art brut with a mesmerizing central performance by Karel Dobrý as the poet. He gives a startling physical performance, completely capturing the fevered life of the locked-away Blatný.
Dobrý is equaled by Tereza Nekudová, who plays Frances Meacham, the nurse who befriended the poet and collected his writing, keeping it from prying doctors and careless charwomen. “If it wasn’t for her, Blatný’s work might truly have vanished,” Štědroň notes.
Štědroň is himself part of the performance, playing piano in the piece’s small combo of trumpets, drums and cello. His music references the serious cabaret music of early 20th-century Central Europe, with its infusions of folk music and jazz, while also stretching toward a more modern dissonance.
Václav Havel said Blatný’s verse and life “complete the fate of Czech literature, which transcended the borders of the nation, often struggling for survival.” Blatný came perilously close to being consigned to history’s rubbish pile. That he survives is worth celebrating, and Divadlo Komedie’s Kabaret is a good place to start.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (9/05/2007):

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