Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...coupled with a lyric ability to lift those observations to the level of metaphor. It is not enough for an artist to be right-minded on even the most potent political issues of his day. To earn a lasting place in literature, to rank with Ibsen or Shaw or Brecht, he must also demonstrate subtlety of craft, power of language and insight into character -- and probably must reach beyond his immediate context into other realms of the real world or imagination. Significantly, after the autobiographical catharsis of 'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys (1982), which reflected his formative bond...
...that's not the only similarity. Brecht subscribed to the J.R. Ewing school of human relations--he is never less than mocking, and usually down right cynical, about human character. Though Brecht, like Sartre, Orwell, and other European intellectuals of his generation, was never really a fellow traveler, he did subscribe to Marx's belief that evil and suffering were the products of a capitalist society...
...Good Woman has all the nasty wit of his best known work, The Threepenny Opera. Unfortunely, Opera collaborator Kurt Weill was long gone when Brecht wrote this play, so director Serban commissioned hip New York composer Elizabath Swados to score Brecht's songs. Some of her past work like Runaways, has been pretty vile, but in Good Woman some of her curt, antimelodic songs are pretty fair substitutes for Weill. This is less laziness on Swados's part, I think, than the fact that Weill's music was the perfect accompaniment to Brecht's cynical, plebian lyrics...
...been characterized by astonishing visual elegance, The Good Woman can only be described as kitsch chinoiserie. There are lots of "Ah so"s and "Honorable sirs" and wavings of fans here, which in almost any other context would look offensively cliched but here fit in perfectly with Brecht's consciously artificial evocation of China. The odd thing about Serban's kitchen sink approach is that he seems to borrow almost as many Japanese conventions as Chinese, suggesting that Serban has been dealing his Orientalism from a rather shallow supply. But who cares, when the production works so well...
...other hand, there are limits. Andreassi goes over the top and out the door playing the caddish pilot Yang Sun. When Brecht spoke of emotionally "distancing" the audience from the actors, he was thinking in terms of yards, not light-years. Though Shipley's male alter-ego Shui Ta is an outstanding piece of physical acting (her face is concealed by a mask), she never quite makes you believe that Shen Te was either a prostitute or someone who Did It All For Love. Joseph Costa is fine as an unemployed hobo, but in the important supporting role...