SOURCE: A review of The Memorandum, in Financial Times, 30 March 1995, p. 17.

Hemmings argues that the subject matter of The Memorandum is still current: "the use of language or jargon to obscure meaning has by no means vanished, " she maintains.

One problem facing any writer in a totalitarian regime is that many words and phrases are hopelessly devalued by their official use. In The Memorandum, the Czech dissident playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel tackles this dilemma head on, by making language itself the subject of the play. His 30-year-old comedy deals with a monolithic office of uncertain function, where a new language is introduced to make communications more precise and to galvanise the chronically inefficient staff. Naturally, the project is doomed. The language proves too difficult for most employees, those who do master it begin to introduce unwelcome spontaneity, and the labyrinthine rules attached to its use are utterly self-defeating.

It...