Word: brecht
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Ritchie, though, deserves much of the credit for the success of this show. The Physicist is immensely difficult to produce successfully, because Duerrenmatt clearly wants it to be an educational, as well as a theatrical experience, a any good post-Brechtian European playwright would. But he, like Brecht, is a natural dramatist; you automatically empathize with these wacky . So Duerrenmatt could hardly accept idea that an audience must be made to detach itself from the play completely -- forced not to empathize with the characters, but only to think about them...
Duerrenmatt meets Brecht halfway. He cannot write a drama that does not excite sympathy, any more than Brecht could himslef. So he uses the sympathy he creates to set up the kind of didactic theatre Brecht talked about. To return to the example of the body in the doorway: to have to walk over that actress labels her an effect. It creates a detachment and prevents the building up of a mystery-story suspense as the play begins; Duerrenmatt trusts that the suspense will develop but itself. At the end of the act, another body is on the floor...
Watching The Informer is rather like being hit with a sledgehammer. In case the title doesn't get the point across, Brecht uses a prologue and epilogue, both Fraught with Meaning, to drived his point home. And the point is so hackneyed that I found myself trying to read between the lines, sure that there was some subtle message I was missing. Unfortunately, there wasn't. Sometimes good acting can save a poor piece of work, but in this case overacting just lent to the production's problems...
Humanities S-9: It looks like a beaut: the course will study the five plays being put on by the Harvard Summer Players (Shaw's Millionaires, Pinters The Dumb Walter; Beckett's Happy Days; Chekov's Uncle Vanya; and Brecht's Trumpets and Drums). Students will attend some rehearsals, discuss the plays, and perhaps take a bit part in the Brecht for credit in the course. Lectures will be by the Load's three Faculty directors, Robert Chapman, Daniel Seltzer, and George Hamlin. A warning: you'll be competing for grades with some of the members of the Summer Players...
Baal dies without the play's ever having come wholly alive. Despite the spirited work of a proficient cast, the drama is a historical curio that contains something of Brecht's sardonic mood but little of his subsequent theatrical-mastery. Seemingly hailing the life force, Baal paradoxically suggests Brecht's fear of it, as if the worship of life could only lead to sensual derangement. If ever a playwright had a split personality, it was Bertolt Brecht. In later plays, he seemed to revel in decadence and cynicism while mourning purity. His intellect was at war with...