Word: brecht
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...choice of a first play, Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, to launch the new theater was symbolically correct. Houston is the nation's space center, and on opening night 30 of the U.S.'s 52 astronauts were present. They journey among the stars that Galileo peered at through his heretical telescope...
...soar into orbit. Perhaps the shift in sheer playing space from the postage-stamp stage of the old Alley Theater was intimidating. A risky lark tends to become a sobersided responsibility when culture receives the imprimatur of opulence. In this production, everything that was raging and revolutionary in Brecht has been quietly domesticated. The central confrontation of the play, the direct clash between the authority of divine revelation and the authority of scientific observation, is muted...
False Messiah. As Galileo, Tony van Bridge is far from the ravenous sensualist of thought that Brecht had in mind, a man as avid for "a new idea as for an old wine." He nibbles fastidiously at a part that calls for gorging. This glutton of the mind is an intellectual mercenary. He will retract theories, integrity and self-respect so long as he is paid off with his life. Knowledge is an appetite for him and not an unstained banner of loyalty to scientific inquiry or a mandate to kill the belief in God. He is the typical Brechtian...
...this pedestrian production, all that is least attractive in Brecht becomes dismayingly visible. He is a classroom martinet using the stage as a blackboard for his highly debatable theorems. He is forever barking out class-conscious slogans at what he regards as an inattentive crew of playgoing idiots. The Teutonic condescension of the man finally becomes as irritating as it is boring. Inspired direction can mask the defects of monumental didacticism, the preachiness of a Shaw without wit. This Director Vance fails to do. In Houston right now, the playhouse is the thing...
Schweyk in the Second World War--Brecht's play in a radical adaptation by Charles Sabel. At ELIOT HOUSE...