Programme Note for The Bureaucrat

The Bureaucrat is a work of black comedy. That is to say, I hope a good deal of it will be compulsively funny, though the theme itself has a serious side – the grim fiasco of work in a Government Department, and the way it paralyses the people who are caught up in it. I think I am quite well qualified to round out such a picture, having been submerged in that kind of work for seven years in Wellington.

The problem the play presents is really one of mistaken ideal – the main character, Fireman, is a modern Prometheus chained to a desk, instead of a rock, under the disastrous impression that the advance of technology, science and education is going to make human lives more meaningful, even though it has evidently made his own life more meaningless.

The three cleaning women, in a sense, constitute a chorus, but they also carry the weight of some of the action, and this action is a particularly lively and integral part of the play.

The Bureaucrat finished up, I think, a good deal nearer to Kafka than to Aeschylus.

1967 (475)