Word: brecht
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...BERTOLT BRECHT is one of those playwrights about whom there can be no equivocation. In his plays, like it or not, one must take a side, either with the rapacious, self-centered capitalists or the downtrodden but gritty workingmen. Brecht's drama, to borrow Lionel Trilling's phrase, takes place at that "bloody crossroads where art and politics meet...
...Brecht, an incredibly ambitious and fecund playwright, borrows Eastern and particularly Indian techniques for Chalk Circle. The inserted songs, somewhat reedily rendered by Stark; the stage-manager as chorus, marvelously narrated by clarion-voiced Andrew Garrett; the use of scene titles--all wed form with geography to good effect. Director Thomas Seoh might have exploited this exotic influence more extravagantly with stilts or wire-hoops. Seoh seemed a bit diffident about taking such directorial prerogatives...
...CAST, although generally competent, particularly warms to their roles during the last scene, which-appropriately enough for a law school audience--takes place in a courtroom. From an epic style in the earlier portion of the play. Brecht shifts nimbly to parable. Grusha must contend with the haughty mother over who will gain possession of the child. Azdak, the magistrate-rogue, played with animation by David Miller, gives the "chalk-circle test." Grusha lets go of Michael because she doesn't want to hurt him "I brought him up! Should I tear him apart...
...twenties, lean, slight, light-skinned, freckled, pale-eyed, sharp-faced. He wears round wire-rimmed spectacles like Bertolt Brecht's and a bush of red hair teased out as if in ongoing electrocution. His chin and lips are hairless. No hippie he, his clothes are rumpled but clean, plain, even severe: in Ambrose's phrase, he dresses like a minor member of the North Korean U.N. delegation...
Wedekind was undeniably an influence on Brecht, who has the same disdain for interior logic, presents characters as symbols, and portrays a similarly seamy and exploitative world. But Wedekind's people lack the earthiness of Brecht's; their passions seem forced and silly. Brecht managed to create recognizable, if exaggerated, people. But Wedekind's characters are pale and disembodied ghosts. This failure flaws the play and riddles it with inconsistencies that make the characters hard to portray, the play hard to follow, and leaves it ultimately insubstantial. Wedekind brilliantly creates an atmosphere; he simply cannot create people to inhabit...