Havel wants wife to star in first play in 19 years

Almost two decades after Czechoslovakia's velvet revolution transformed Vaclav Havel from dissident writer into post-communist president, he is returning to his creative roots with a new play that will premiere in Britain next year.

Leaving will debut next June in Prague and appear shortly afterwards in Britain, probably performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, according to Havel's long-time friend and agent, Jitka Sloupova.

His first play for 19 years has already caused controversy in Prague, after he demanded that his wife be cast as Irena, the main female character. " We are still not 100 per cent sure but the Vinohrady theatre in Prague is trying to meet his demands. It would be great if it works out, and the most likely first night is 6 June next year," Ms Sloupova said in an interview. "Havel's conditions were that David Radok direct the play, that his wife Dagmar Havlova play the leading female role, and that Jan Triska play the leading man."

Czech media have reported that Prague's National Theatre lost the chance to stage Leaving by refusing to cast Havlova, and that the Theatre on the Balustrade where Havel began his career was not big enough for a play that will attract huge interest. Asked about these reports, Ms Sloupova said: "You may put it like this, but things are never that simple."

Havlova, who at 54 is 17 years younger than her husband, is widely disliked by Czechs for marrying him less than a year after the death of his popular first wife in 1996, and has been the focus of lurid tabloid gossip for several years. But the playwright said recently of his wife: "She was present when I was writing [Leaving]. She lived [the presidency] alongside me. I wrote it for her. I imagined her being in it," .

Havel's plays were banned when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring of liberal reform in 1968, and he was jailed several times after co-founding the Charter 77 human rights movement. But when Communism crumbled across eastern Europe in 1989, Charter 77's leaders left the shadowy world of samizdat publications and secret meetings to broker a peaceful transition to democracy, and Havel was elected president in December that year.

As the last leader of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic after it split from Slovakia in 1993, Havel had little time for writing until he left office four years ago, when he rediscovered the notes that have evolved into Leaving.

"Havel thought he had burnt the notes during his presidency, expecting never to get back to it," recalled Ms Sloupova. "But after he left office a secretary found them in some paperwork, and Havel read them and decided to continue. He worked on it when he was in the United States last winter, and finished it in May this year when he was back home."

Leaving concerns the traumatic eviction of Chancellor Vilem Rieger from his state villa at the end of his term in office. It includes quotes from Shakespeare's King Lear and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and, like them, addresses themes of change, dispossession and the passage of power from one generation to the next.

"The main character in some ways resembles Havel but it is not him. It's satire, not autobiography," insisted Ms Sloupova, who admitted that audiences may see similarities to the current President, Vaclav Klaus, and other politicians in some of the characters.