[lbo-talk] Brecht

[wrobert at uci.edu]

What a terrible article.  It replicates a whole set of lazy readings of
Brecht, without much regard to conversations that his polemics existed in,
or what he was critiquing.  The little Verso volume with Adorno, Bloch, et
al, offers a good intro into Brecht's thinking, that makes this look like
the obvious nonsense that it is.  I saw a Mpls revival of Arturo Ui that
was fantastic by the way.

                             robert wood

PS There are also a very nice set of recordings of the Eisler
collaborations by Dagmar Krause (of Slapp Happy/Henry Cow fame)


> 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
>
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