"You can't have it every way . . ."
Eric Bentley translation
directed by Peter Sanfilippo
Variant Theatre Company production of July-August 2004
review August 1st 2004, by Louis Lopard
The late, great Quentin Crisp, when asked about Nazis being charismatic, replied "Of course they had charisma- If they did not there wouldn't be now a whole nation of elderly Germans saying 'I can't imagine what came over me.'" In a quip he summarized what many great thinkers have pondered. (Hanna Arendt's 'The Banality of Evil' presages the prosaic and sloe-eyed Adolph Eichman for the simple beaurocrat that he was.) Brecht was not so much concerned with the why or how it happened, as with instigating the audience to dialogue. His vignettes (sometimes titled "Private Life of the Master Race") tend to avoid the Nazis themselves - except as found in the sometimes interpolated songs, here omitted. Brecht notes details but misses their insidiousness: The Hitler Youth was not only "open" - as is said in "The Informer" - but they made Sunday their primary meeting day in order to force kids to choose between hiking and camping with their friends, or listening to stuffy preachers in church with their parents. Even Brecht, writing from the relative safety of Scandinavia, did not know at the time how carefully this was all planned.
In a directing seminar I heard someone say "there is only one way to do Brecht: the right way" To Brecht's benefit, they were wrong, Director Peter Sanfilippo with the Variant Theatre Company provided well thought-out pacing and editing, and some brave choices, presenting a highly stylized production of a type popular in some places in the late sixties. The cast was in whiteface, some with grotesque makeup, and was quick to adopt ritualistic stock dramatic poses and attitudes. The style draws heavily from the world of European cabaret, and is fine for short skits in that venue, but I still doubt its efficacy in a full evening-length production. For one thing, much of the text is lost - even though the carefully trained cast largely had excellent diction and projection. Apropos for a television-raised generation, the audience is wowed by visuals at a breakneck pace, and tends to not listen as closely to the words. But in all, this was an auspicious debut (the program calls it 'premiere') by the Variant Company.
The evening opened with a cast placarded and labeled in true ur-Brecht fashion. This quickly devolved into a full ballet mécanique, often repeated - with the ensemble and rolling set pieces performing with drill team precision. It was engaging and fun to watch, though the symbolism wore thin as the evening progressed. The mechanical motifs set the tone, however, for the acting to come, and in time the hyper-acted, stylized movements did simply become part of the piece. Even the automaton scene-changing routines became expected and acceptable (though by late in the evening they grew wearing). When it all worked (as in the scene change after the first housewife scene, and the asides in the "Informer") it worked beautifully and was exhilarating. Other times it said "look what I learned in movement class." The stylizations were carried over to penetrate the curtain calls completely, in the manner of much school theatre.
Shonna Drew presented one of the more lifelike characters as The Jewish Wife - both opening and closing the evening. How interesting to have the whole ensemble attend to her final monologue - if only they didn't look so bored. Timothy Foley played The Husband, doing some of the best work I've seen from him in several seasons, rigidly curtailing his range and adjusting to the changing moment. The Maid was played to perfection by MaryAnne Piccolo who I suspect, like many in the cast, is capable of a tremendous range (I would love to see her do Shaw or Molliere or Feydeau). There were consistent charaterizations by Andy Stokan, David Benson and Adam D-F Stevens. David Jacks played a judge with a deftly hidden demonic side to the character, and Jeremy Goren was a 'company man' prosecutor. Kelly Jo Reid was a perfectly styled 'Wife.'
An excellent (if slightly too thorough) Sound Design was by the Director and his Sound Engineers John Neubauer and Nick Holmes. My only quibble was with the excessive underscoring, which besides compromising the spoken text in long scenes, threatened to turn Brecht's "monodrama" into melodrama - certainly a conflict with the style of this particular production. (Note to designers: very compressed sound presented from speakers over actors' heads means someone will lose, as both are competing for the same frequency space.) The use of highly mobile (and perfectly chosen) set pieces underlined what black box theatre is supposed to be about: creativity. There was a minor bit of brilliance involving a window frame on a rolling support. Lighting Designer Eric Cope achieved miracles with a mere handful of fresnels. Stage Management (which must have been a nightmare) was by Brad Gore who deserves a medal.
Such a highly stylized presentation - especially when performed with such a young cast - tends to subvert the pity in Brecht's vision: Those were real flesh and blood people - people like you and me,- and therein lies the horror. They were not merely automatons mechanistically following their Reich's-Fuhrer into oblivion. The judges "In Search Of Justice" are an excellent example. The true pathos in the story can only come about when the viewer realizes that these were not squeaky clean grads fresh out of law school, but wizened, grey-haired adjudicators: judges who had lived through the birth pangs of the Weimar Republic, and who have now lived long enough to compromise their humanity irretrievably. There are post-war photos of their faces which should be seen by every budding Brecht director. This director will be interesting to watch in the future. We've seen what he can do; now let's see what he can feel.