n/a

n/a

Rosemary Branch, London

1989

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

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theatre Na Zabradli, Prague

2007

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

4

4

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The "dark house" was built as a grandiose family residence by a young and successful lawyer, with the help of her parents. Her intention was to put pressure on her colleague, Dr. Pompe, who had avoided marriage for some years. His hesitation had been caused by a family tendency to mental instability. Eventually they do marry, and stay married. However, the house - a sinful attempt to buy love - leaves its mark on the whole family. Dr. Pompe's attachment to the house led him, before the outbreak of World War II, to refuse to take his Jewish wife and her parents abroad. Later, he similarly refused to sell the house to pay for his wife's brother's flight across the frontier, thus sealing the fate of his brother-in-law. Still clinging to the house, Dr. Pompe talked his wife into denying her Jewish origins and, in a paternity case, present counterfeit evidence that she was not her parents' daughter and did not have Jewish blood. His wife still suffers guilt over this. Fear of losing the house meant that thirty years later Dr. Pompe disinherited his son Dušan after he (Dušan) had fallen foul of the Communist authorities. Even today this morbid fear of losing the house is the reason why Dr. Pompe tries to prevent his daughter Šárka from being taken into a psychiatric clinic. Šárka and her husband have a daughter, and Dr. Pompe knows that if Šárka's husband divorces her, no court would give a mentally ill wife custody of the child. In this way his granddaughter's share of the house would pass to an "alien" family. That, at least, is how the lawyer Dušan Pompe, a fanatic for truth, sees the family history. Dušan is the elder son of the owners of the "dark house". One Sunday in June 1992 he arrives with his wife Vi?ka for a family gathering. His mother promises that it will lead to a reconciliation and the restoration of Dušan's rights of inheritance. However, his father theatrically avoids the meeting, pretending he has to make some urgent repairs to a faulty stopcock. Dušan's wife Vi?ka is the good angel of the play, the creator of the miracles which take place that day in the "dark house". Unlike her husband she respects her parents-in-law and their suffering. She saves Šárka from an attempted suicide attempt. She manages things so that under the new inheritance arrangements the entire house will pass to her sick sister-in-law and be a source of betterment for her; and she indirectly contributes towards her father-in-law - when his amateur bungling has caused the water main to burst - giving up his former terrorisation of the family and calling for a plumber. However, he takes Dušan's closing apology comically, continuing to pretend he has confused him with his younger son. Dušan's mother hopes that the family reconciliation will be confirmed on their next visit.