Word: brecht
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...formula is almost completely predictable. If a woman in a Brecht play tells a man that she loves him, the odds are overwhelming that within minutes she will turn whore or he pimp; if someone puts money in his pocket, probably stolen, someone else will steal it; if a character speaks of honor, loyalty, progress-and particularly religion-chances are that he is merely masking a corrupt and greedy deal. This kind of unrelieved, often naive cynicism, heavily tinged with Marxism, has defeated many another writer. But at his best Brecht has risen above it and fashioned a rich, varied...
SEVEN PLAYS (587 pp.) - Bertolt Brecht-Grove...
...individual or civil turmoil; in the comedies, it is the lover's mistaken identity. In Ibsen, it is self-doubt besetting the stolid bourgeois; in Strindberg, it is a shrill cry of female hysteria; in Shaw, it is paradoxical argument overturning a pose. Germany's late Bertolt Brecht, one of the 20th century's remarkable playwrights, has his own typical moment. In play after play, through changing locales, characters and moods, the Brechtian moment is man selling his fellow...
Body German. Since his death in 1956, Brecht has become a worldwide vogue. In West Germany, he has displaced Shaw in frequency of production, and ranks after Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller. East Germany lavishly maintains his personal repertory company, the Berliner Ensemble, with its perfectionist troupe led by Brecht's widow. Paris audiences have been flocking to The Good Woman of Setzuan and Arturo Ui. London is temporarily Brechtless but saw four of his plays last season. A five-year off-Broadway run of The Threepenny Opera not long ago chalked up a New York theater record by passing...
Even in German, Brecht plays far better than he reads, and in translation, the language gap cannot be closed. Brecht fashioned such a personal idiom in German that his language has been called "a function of the body." The present translations need more body English. Even so, the volume is an excellent introduction to Brecht's restlessly animated evocation of life, in which his puppets-numberless versions of Everyman-dance to the Threepenny tune of Jonathan Peachum...