"Why is Shakespeare so frequently revived? He was an opportunist whose mission it was to peddle an ideology -- Tudor supremacy -- that is so obscure that you need a graduate degree in European history to know what it is, and which is not even alive even to be defunct. His theories, if he had any, replicate conventional attitudes of his time that we find patronising and dated. Yet
> > he could create memorable characters and rich
> opportunities for actors,
> > tell a gripping story, and raise concerns that are
> still pertinent
.....
--- On Sun, 9/13/09, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Brecht
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sunday, September 13, 2009, 7:58 PM
> 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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> >
> >
>
>
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