Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that really doesn't matter since, in any case, The Hostage is a play which refuses to be judged by any consistent set of standards. If it must be genre-ized, it would probably come fairly close to being a bawdy, Gaelic Kaufman and Hart with a bit of Brecht thrown in--a description which however enticing it might look as a publicity blurb, still ignores the fundamental fact that this play is basically an extended music hall entertainment...
...Chorus speeches among four persons, imported dialogue from the end of 2 Henry IV (delivered over loudspeakers), and added lines of his own by way of scene descriptions. And there is a steady parade of gimmicks and odd bits of business, borrowed from such sources as the plays of Brecht, Genet's The Balcony, and the Living Theatre's Mysteries and Smaller Pieces. Kahn is, like Autolycus in The Winter's Tale, a 'snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." He has seen a lot of theatre, he is young, and he is eager to try out a lot of ideas...
Kahn then proceeds with his play. He has divided his text into twenty-one chunks. At the outset of each, one person strikes the claves and, in the manner of Brecht's "epic theatre," declaims a caption that purports to distill the ideological essence of the scene to follow. Thus we hear, for instance: "Scene 7: Siege of Harfleur; Propaganda of the Machine; The People Follow"; "Scene 11: Winter Continues; Discourses on War and Death; The Army Marches"; "Scene 15: Economic Lesson on the Battlefield"; "Scene 17: Exeter Tells the Lie of Noble Death...
Whenever Shakespeare is presented in unaccustomed form, the question arises as to whether geriatric pills of restorative gimmickry have been administered, or whether the timely has retrieved the timeless. Kahn does not distrust the text. He simply looks into it with the sardonic eyes of a Brecht. The result is a play about war, heroism and patriotism colored in the mock-ironic hues of a generation that cannot believe in war, heroism and patriotism. In that light, valor may appear as cruelty and national honor as parochial vanity...
...store combined, it is run by a French lady, Mrs. Renée Juda, who has wanted to start such a café for a long time. She specializes in contemporary and modern Romance language paperbacks, with a small German section. "I could not have a book store without Brecht," Mrs. Juda says...