Translated voices: comedy and the absurd

Tonight's texts are all translated from Eastern European originals, and all of them are funny in ways that make you uneasy. Herbert addresses a bureaucratic alter ego with deadpan precision about torture. Kharms writes miniature catastrophes where people fall out of windows and stories end before they start. Gogol detaches a man's nose and sends it around St. Petersburg outranking its former owner. The comedy in each piece is doing serious work -- watch for what it's covering.