Celebrity calamity

As an expat, there are occasions when one's foreignness is brought into stark relief. Attending a performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor entirely in Czech at Prague Castle starring film, television and theater star Bolek Polívka can be one of these moments. On the evening I attended, the smiling upturned faces of the largely Czech audience contrasted my own displeasure as Polívka did, well, his best Polívka in the role of Falstaff, turning one of the Bard's better comic characters into a hammy, extended cameo from a regional celebrity.

The production, which premiered at last season's Summer Shakespeare Festival, has been overshadowed this year by two notable (and preferable) appearances of the character: Ostrava native Norbert Lichý in Henry IV and Alexander Delamere in an English-language production of Merry Wives. For the uninitiated, the show promises to be a disappointing conclusion to a better-than-average festival program. But while its entrance into the regular repertoire may have dampened its interest as breaking news, Polívka's draw with native playgoers has translated into consistent box-office success.  

Despite (or rather, because of) its failings, Merry Wives is exemplary of some of the festival's traditional shortcomings. Fading stars and auteurs with impressive résumés have a tendency to spoil the efforts of lesser-known practitioners. The best the festival has to offer tends to be peopled by ambitious newcomers like the recently formed GB Theatre Company and freshly minted productions like PaS de Theatre's recent coup with Romeo and Juliet.  

Director Jiří Menzel is the recipient of well-deserved international fame, but his gifts are decidedly not on display here. His breakout feature film Closely Watched Trains (1966) is a classic example of the best that the Czechoslovak New Wave has to offer, but you wouldn't know it from the uninspired vitiation that serves for blocking in Merry Wives.

Polívka's supporting cast (and they largely amount to little else) uniformly suffer from a marked tendency to play to the audience, telegraphing their jokes like lazy roundhouses from a punchy fighter. It's this facet of the production that alienates anyone who isn't star-struck by the assembled celebrities. It's difficult to describe the warped reality one experiences while sitting silently aghast as a smug Polívka & Co. smirk and wink unctuously to an adoring audience, none of whom seems the least bit put out by the fact that the character as written has become subservient to the cult of personality.

Far be it from me to try and rain on anyone's parade - though with open-air theater this is always a literal threat - but in light of the practical annihilation of Falstaff, regional royalty feels like a pretty poor substitute. One may try, for example, to imagine the agonies of the unsuspecting playgoer who lacks an awareness of Polívka's fame and is left to presume that this is simply how Shakespeare is done in the Czech Republic. Thankfully, some excellent additions to this year's festival speak emphatically to the contrary.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com