Word: brecht
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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David Levine's new production of Bertolt Brecht's Man is Man is innovative and coherent, engaging and frightening--everything experimental theater should...
...Brecht's parable on the mutability of human identity charts the progress of Galy Gay, played expertly by Evan Sandman, who after leaving home to buy a fish becomes tangled up with a bloodthirsty trio of soldiers. The soldiers cajole the gullible Gay into impersonating one of their comrades. As the play continues, Gay absorbs the traits, mannerisms and speech patterns of the soldiers, the last act finds him so fully absorbed in his new identity that he is more murderous than any of them...
...Brecht intends the audience to remain conscious of the artificiality of the actions on stage to that it can intellectually process the play's themes, rather than becoming emotionally involved. Sandman fulfills Brecht's challenge by presenting Galy Gar's transformation with consistent theatricality...
...contrast between the compelling sensory aspects of this production and the artificiality be the players is weirdly provocative one leaves the theater bewildered and confused but determined to figure out what Brecht was getting...
...talented cast and crew of Man is Man deserve congratulation. Special praise, however, should go to Levine himself, with has managed to synthesize elements of wound, speech, and spectacle into an avant garde dream world which does not sacrifice coherence or resort to the arbitrary. Under Levine's direction, Brecht's Man is Man is a stimulating, intellectually exhilarating experience...