Curtain up on Havel's first play in 20 years

CZECH REPUBLIC:PRAGUE IS preparing for one of Europe's theatrical events of the year as the first play in two decades from Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel opens this evening.

Almost 20 years after the Velvet Revolution transformed Havel from banned playwright into head of state, he will attend the world premiere of Leaving, his tale of a retired leader struggling to cope without the trappings of office.

Havel insists Leaving is neither autobiographical nor an attack on the current president, Vaclav Klaus, but speculation over the playwright's motives and machinations over the venue and cast for the play have only sharpened the theatre world's anticipation.

Havel (71) says he started Leaving before the tumultuous events that brought down communism in 1989, but then put his writing on hold while serving as president until 2003.

"It is built on an . . . experience of a world that is collapsing, of collapsing values, the loss of certainty," Havel said. "I was more interested in the rather general, existential side of the matter. How is it possible that for some people, power has such charisma that, without it, their world collapses?"

The play also provides a role for Havel, whose recorded voice occasionally interrupts and comments upon the action on stage - a characteristically post-modern device from a writer whose absurdist comedies about communist life were banned in 1968, after Soviet tanks crushed hopes of liberal reform in Czechoslovakia.

Havel's return to the stage has hardly been trouble-free. Talks with at least three Prague theatres collapsed over funding, scheduling or casting problems, with Havel adamant that his wife Dagmar play the main female role.

The Archa theatre finally met all Havel's requirements but, barely a fortnight before opening night, his wife quit the production for unspecified health reasons. Czech media is rife with talk of rows with director David Hradok and leading man Jan Triska.

The experience has not staunched Havel's resurgent creative flow. "The film rights to Leaving have been optioned and he is working on a screenplay now," revealed his agent, Jitka Sloupova. "He also has an idea for a new play. I expect this one will be much smaller, though."