Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With this jarring first image, the current production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera captures the cardinal principle of epic theater: a rigid separation between the stage and spectator. This separation, or alienation, prevents the spectator from identifying with the characters. Brechtian theater presents man for scrutiny, to entertain and instruct the spectator. Didactic in intent, it forces him to observe, make decisions, and act on them. Under R.J. Cutler's direction, Threepenny Opera shines with all the power and excitement inherent in Epic theater...
...Threepenny Opera, the most enduring example of Brecht's epic theater, Brecht shows how closely the capitalist business interests relate to the criminal element. The entrepreneur, J.J. Peachum (Ernest Kearns), trafficks in sentiment. He outfits an army of "the poorest of the poor" with begging clothes and districts of operation. Aware of the efforts required to soften a man's heart to the point where he will part with his money, he believes, "no one can make his own misery sound convincing;" he has built an empire on this statement...
...characters' presentation determines the effectiveness of Brecht's message, as assignment this production maintains overall. Ernest Kearns' Mr. Peachum has all the disgusting elements of the petit-bourgeois, and Kearns presents Peachum with a clear understanding of the action-provoking role. Because of the flatness with which Kearns delivers statements sympathetic to Brecht--"The law was made for the rich to exploit those who don't understand it"--he maintains distance from his character. In his dryness and his logic, his running about and his posing, Kearns reduces the "Beggar's Friend" to a common demoninator, strips him down...
...Empathy. While well-acted, this production of Threepenny Opera lacks a social awareness of the play's context intrinsic to the epic theater. As if fearing to offend an audience too used to pleasurable theater and unwilling to be taught, Cutler has dismantled most of the instructive apparatus of Brecht's theater. But for the second Threepenny Finale, the placards bearing song and scene titles--the visual, literal representation necessary for didacticism--are wanting. While the narrator (Lars-Gunnar Wigemar), a ballad-singer, stalks about the stage describing subsequent scenes, this is not enough. He simply reduces the value...
Kitaj's works from the '60s, like The Ohio Gang, set forth dramatic melanges, Bertolt Brecht plus Constructivism plus Al Capone-irresistibly nasty stuff, Neue Sachlichkeit run through a fragmented lens...