by Vaclav Havel.
Radio version by James Saunders from an original translation by Marie Winn.
With Martin Jarvis, Penelope Wilton.

A newly appointed Inspector of Projects promises his workforce freedom to redevelop a medieval castle town. But for how long will this freedom last?

A Radio 4/World Service co-production.
Stereo (R)

R4 A brief season of hope against a repressive regime: Vaclav Havel's drama Redevelopment can be seen as a metaphor for the Prague Spring. First broadcast on Radio 4 last year in the Globe Theatre series and repeated today, the play focuses on a group of architects in Eastern Europe whose creativity is stifled by bureaucratic rigidity - until they are promised a new freedom...

Ironically, the dissident playwright had first endured discrimination not for his politics but because he was born into the wealthy classes; banned from university by the Stalinist government, Havel had originally taken a job as a stagehand. By the time of the 1968 Soviet invasion, he was literary director of an avant-garde theatre, and his plays had earned a reputation outside the country. Ahead of him were years of intimidation, imprisonment, unflagging dedication to his ideals, culminating in this one-time enemy of the state becoming its head - a progression as rich in irony as any of his own absurdist drama (The Monday Play, 7.45pm)