[lbo-talk] Brecht

[John E. Norem]

Why is Brecht still so frequently revived? He was a communist whose 
mission was to peddle what is now a defunct ideology. His theories, once 
revered as theatrical scripture, seem patronising and dated today. Yet 
he could create memorable characters and rich opportunities for actors, 
tell a gripping story, and raise concerns that are still pertinent 
today, above all in the play that now adds Fiona Shaw to a roll call 
that includes Glenda Jackson, Judi Dench and Diana Rigg: /Mother Courage/.

Sometimes he is little more than a doctrinaire didact, mounting 
clockwork attacks on capitalism, authority and even the Nazism that 
drove him from Germany. Who now would stage /The Mother/, in which an 
unpolitical worker’s wife becomes a crusading activist after her son’s 
arrest? Even /The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,/ which involves a 
mobster who takes over Chicago’s cauliflower trade, seems crude, awkward 
and reductive in its identification of the title-character with Hitler. 
Yet when Antony Sher took the role in 1991, he blazed and the play soared.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6831049.ece