The Orange Tree's 30-year involvement with Václav Havel has culminated this autumn with the UK premiere of Leaving , which Havel began writing before the velvet revolution of 1989 and finished after he left office as president of the Czech Republic in 2003, and which happens to be about a president leaving office. The fanfares were muted slightly when it turned out not to be so terrific a play. Before it returns in December, the theatre presents two double bills of Havel's 1970s work, of which this is the first.

Audience (1975) is the first of the semi-autobiographical "Vanek" plays. In it Vanek, a dissident playwright assigned by the state (as was Havel) to work in a brewery, is called to an interview in the boss's office. The latter, growing progressively drunker on his own product, offers Vanek a cushier position in the warehouse if he will help out by writing surveillance reports on himself. Robert Austin enjoys slurring a series of repetitious platitudes although he may take less pleasure in getting through the better part of a dozen bottles of stage beer inside 45 minutes (especially, as when I saw him last Saturday, after a matinee performance as well). David Antrobus as Vanek has little to do except keep a straight face.