PTP/NYC Stages BRECHT ON BRECHT at Atlantic Stage 2

L-R: Harrison Bryan, Christine Hamel, Jake Murphy, and Carla Martinez in BRECHT ON BRECHT.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

An exile from Nazi Germany, an avowed Marxist, and an unabashed apologist for Soviet Communism, Bertolt Brecht was unquestionably one of the most influential playwrights of the last century.  The author of more than fifty plays and screenplays – including The Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo, The Good Women of Setzuan, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and Mother Courage and Her Children – as well as hundreds of poems, he upended the classic theatrical world with his innovative “epic theater,” a non-linear self-referential socio-political exercise in which audiences were continually reminded that what they were watching was not real but only a representation of reality.  To that end, he sought to “alienate” his audiences through the use of a variety of spectacular dramatic incongruities including the elimination of conventional props, circus-like atmospherics, breaking down the “fourth wall,” and having characters step out of their assigned roles to engage their audiences directly.

Brecht’s work was greatly informed by the fact that he was forced to flee Nazi Germany, initially settling in Scandinavia before emigrating to the United States, only returning to East Berlin in 1947 after having been investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his Communist views. – and by the fact that he was a staunch Marxist and apologist for Soviet Communism.  Brecht’s socio-political and dramatic inclinations led inexorably to his ridiculing and parodying capitalism and free market systems for their presumed devolution into authoritarianism and his perception of their other shortcomings (including the exploitation of the individual).

Now in its thirty-second season, PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)) is persisting in its mission to present theatrically complex and thought-provoking work of contemporary social and cultural relevance and, to that end, it is currently staging a superb revival of Brecht on Brecht at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan.  As adapted by George Tabori from a potpourri of songs and excerpts from Brecht’s plays and private texts, Brecht on Brecht was originally produced in 1961, but it remains a remarkable revue of the playwright’s life and is as timely today as it was more than a half-century ago.

The play remains true to the principles of Brecht’s “epic theater,” with its Company of ten highly accomplished performers all donning red noses and cavorting about onstage in a rollicking circus-like atmosphere and directly addressing the audience while delivering powerful monologues and soliloquies and fine renditions of eleven of Brecht’s best-known songs (set to the music of two of Brecht’s principal collaborators, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler).  All of the performances were good but my very favorites were Army Song and Barbara Song (both sung by the entire Company), Pirate Jenny (sung by Christine Hamel) and Surabaya Johnny (sung by Carla Martinez) - and what was for me, the high point of the play, not a musical rendition at all but rather an exceptional monologue by Christine Hamel in the role of Judith Keith, “The Jewish Wife” forced to flee Nazi Germany.