Panharmonicon
Panharmonicon is a play about Beethoven, technology, the incompetence of the ruling class and the notion of pan-European identity.
It's a comedy set around the Austrian Court during the Napoleonic wars. Beethoven is frustrated by the incompetence of the Court Orchestra, and is therefore intrigued when the Court Mechanic, one Maelzel, invents a Mechanical Orchestra (the Panharmonicon) capable (or so he says!) of replacing the orchestra. The orchestra plot to destroy Maelzel's invention and get their jobs back. Meanwhile Beethoven goes stone deaf, and disguises the fact by pretending to be the classic rude, unkempt eccentric artist, and the Austrian state is ultimately protected from the Emperor's incompetent governing throughout by the astonishingly clever Machiavellian diplomacy of his Chief Minister Count Metternich.
Panharmonicon had a rehearsed reading at the Nottingham Playhouse, April 2002.
Cast: 10 men, 2 women
Production history: Nottingham Playhouse (reading), 2002
