The Miller’s Monkey at The Estates Theatre

“We have no Molièresque humour, with the exception of a few of Klicpera’s comedies,” said the distinguished Czech theatre director and theoretician Jind?ich Honzl, thus precisely rendering the essence of the talent endowed to the playwright and poet Václav Kliment Klicpera (1792–1859): knitting together comic scenes, familiar from Ancient mime and Italian commedia dell’arte, into an integrated dramatic story. His complete plays, replete with situational humour and puns, served for Milan Šotek to compile a “brand-new” comedy, bearing in mind specific National Theatre actors. To paraphrase the title of one of Klicpera’s one-acters, Everyone Something for the Homeland, he has taken from each of the plays for the “Nation”, giving rise to a sort of “Klicpera show”. The production will be performed on the stage where Klicpera himself once worked, two centuries ago (in 1817, the first version of his play Hadrian of ?ímsy was premiered at the Estates Theatre). We are of the opinion that the time has come for Klicpera’s legacy, which alongside J. K. Tyl’s oeuvre, is one of the pillars of Czech drama, to be embraced by the “new blood” of the National Theatre.