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ABOUT THE PLAY

Bohumil Hrabal—the brightest star in the Czech literary sky.

This new adaptation of his greatest novel, I Served the King of England, is conceived as an intimate project with only a few protagonists. We seek to capture the sweep of great history through the eyes of a little man aptly named Dítě—Child—who becomes its unwilling participant. His journey as a small man with an entrepreneur’s soul, through numerous and often tragic mistakes towards wisdom, self-discovery and genuine human values, is expressed through purely theatrical means, with emphasis on the essence of Hrabal’s prose: playfulness and imagination.

The stage illusion uses objects from the protagonist’s final home, a last cottage in a remote borderland where his only companions are animals and his own soul, reflected in the many mirrors he has gathered along the way. Just as he tries to keep a road passable that may lead nowhere and that perhaps nobody but him will ever take, he keeps open his path of memories into the past, where he searches for answers about the meaning of his own life and of life itself.

The history of twentieth-century Europe passes before us not as a grand fresco, but as something that acquires a somewhat grotesque tone when measured through the eyes of an ordinary man. At the same time, we emphasise the other pole of Hrabal’s literature: humanity and a deep compassion for the human soul, not only in its nobility but also in its misery.

Premiere: 17 June 2026

PERFORMERS AND CREATIVES

Written by Bohumil Hrabal

Directed by Petr Svojtka

Cast: Antonín Holub, Tereza Vítů and Jan Vlasák