Four games

From the early to peak period of Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich's creative collaboration, the Česká knižnice series brings a collection of four plays: The improvised parody Vest Pocket Revue (1927), which subverts traditional methods of staging drama and opera, presents a free-flowing sequence of acted and sung scenes from a journey around the world, during which a frantic photographer tries to get a picture of a famous writer. The romantic grotesque revue Golem (1931), set against the mysterious backdrop of Rudolfine Prague, uses the theatrical mask of apparent apoliticism to critically comment on modern times and, among other things, foreshadows the future film comedy The Emperor's Baker and The Baker's Emperor. The aggressively parodic fantasy from ancient Rome, Caesar (1932), about political machinations, corruption, spinelessness, and the pursuit of personal interests at the expense of the state, lends itself to many contemporary interpretations even today. The defiant, yet lyrical social satire The Rag Ballad (1935) captures a romantic episode from the life of the cursed French poet François Villon, while allegorically warning against the silencing of the artist-intellectual in a totalitarian society.

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Reality, in its decay, has reached such a critical state that it would be a crime for an artist not to express their point of view.

— from the play Caesar

It is your fault that you think, and that you say what you think out loud.

— from the play The Rag Ballad