La tercera era

LA TERCERA ERA / THE THIRD AGE (TRETÍ VEK)

M 5, F 4

The play with its subtitle “The Images of Generations” was shortlisted for the Alfréd Radok playwriting award for original playscript in 2002. It is a bitter comic farce about several generation now getting to their “turn of age”.

A sometime popular actor Jan Dolina, now retired and turning more and more to drink, is being questioned by Egon, a boyfriend of his daughter who wants to do a feature program on him. The interview is set in a retirement home where Dolina is locked with a gay musician, Arnošt. The consent was given secretly by Egon’s friend Dušan, a psychologist working in the home. The only motive for Jan Dolina to speak into the dictaphone is to find reconciliation with his daughter Tamara: he’s sure open communication with her boyfriend will have a positive influence on her. The psychologist Dušan expects a baby with Egon’s former partner Tereza but does not consider their relationship to be something stable and fixed.

The mosaic, composed in an almost “Chekhovian”, many layered way out of the interlinked fate of the characters is complemented by both the dysfunctional relationship of Egon’s parents unable to communicate with each other for many years now, and the nurse Magda who is romantically involved with Dušan.

The author lets the menagery of his characters sink all the way to the very bottom of their relationship and their will to live: Arnošt attempts a suicide; Egon’s mother leaves his father for Dolina getting “revenge” for his old misdemeanour; both Dušan and Egon have to deal with their tired relationship to their partners... The ending is utopic: they find strength to fight their own egoism, and even Egon’s parents find the way to each other. It would seem nothing more stands in the way of a Third Age of love and understanding.