Wed, 24. 4. 2024, 19.00 hrs

EGBDF (FINDING THE RIGHT NOTE)

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

An intriguing name for a play, but what’s the story behind it?

The musical clue is in the name itself. In English, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour serves as a useful phrase to help remember the notes on the lines of the treble clef stave, which are EGBDF.

Our final Subscription Series C concert is a groundbreaking collaborative arts venture between the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra and the Zlín Theatre Company, as Patrik Lančarič directs the Czech-British playwright Tom Stoppard’s play EGBDF. Stoppard, who was born in Zlín and is of Jewish origin, was helped by the Bat’a company to flee his homeland in the late 1930s in the face of Nazi persecution, going first to Singapore, then India, and finally to Great Britain, where he went on to become a successful writer for stage and screen. ,

EGBDF is a political satire with music by the composer and conductor André Previn, written in 1977 primarily as a tribute to the Soviet dissidents who bravely protested on Red Square in 1968 against the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Set in the Soviet Union, it tells the story of two men held in a psychiatric hospital there. 

Alexander is a Soviet political prisoner sent there because of his politically unacceptable views, confined until he will admit that his anti-regime statements are allegedly due to a mental disorder. He shares a cell with a genuinely disturbed schizophrenic called Ivanov, who believes himself to have a symphony orchestra under his command Around these two characters Stoppard weaves a plot reconciling anger and humour, a story which reflects the fact that one of the worst things about despotism is its ability to manipulate reality. The darkly humorous and thought-provoking play also asks whether denying the truth is an acceptable price to pay in exchange for freedom. How topical …

Stoppard’s play, which has been staged in London, New York and elsewhere, is having its Czech premiere here in the writer’s birthplace with actors from the Zlín Theatre Company and the full orchestra which, far from having a mere supporting role, is an intrinsic element of the play itself.