Romps with a robot

Judging by Simon Godwin's tentative, not very amusing production, time has been ungenerous to this heavy-handed, heavy-hearted satirical farce by Vaclav Havel. The Increased Difficulty Of Concentration, absurdist in tone, premiered during the Prague Spring of 1968 when hopes of escaping communism's clutches ran high.

But although Havel was not then free to write or speak his mind, I find difficulty in discerning the radical perspective to which a programme-note refers. I suppose, though, the ironic treatment of Eduard Huml, a philosophical social scientist, who has eloquent theories about human needs and happiness while being glaringly unable to put them into practice, does have a veiled political aspect.

Huml, who is given an insufficient air of sexual hypocrisy, guile and randy furtiveness by Martin Wenner, has agreed to be questioned by a robot. This sub-human contraption, Puzuk, looks like a cash-register and never manages to pose a useful or coherent question.

But, as Huml realises, Puzuk may help "find a way to shape human individuality scientifically". In other words, Puzuk stands for Stalinism. Huml, whose fear of authority Wenner fails to convey, at last dares tell Anna Balcar, a fellow social scientist who controls the robot, that man's complexity can be understood not by machines but through study of the heart and feelings.

There is some similarity between Huml, who cannot choose between his wife and mistress, and the anti-relativist philosopher, George, in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers. But Jumpers, which premiered a few years after Havel's play, is far more inventive and funnier. The Increased Difficulty Of Concentration, set in a room with four doors through which wife, mistress, secretary and the team controlling the computer pass, is more an extra-bedroom romp and depiction of male sexual voraciousness than an existential debate.

In snippet-like scenes, Huml suavely plays off his unhappy wife (impressive Cate Hamer) against his demanding mistress Renata (Catherine Cusack). He swoops upon an outraged secretary and dallies with Dr Anna. Better acted, this would all work as an absurdist farcical contest between sexual and cerebral urges.

The Increased Difficulty Of Concentration