This has been the year capitalism emptied our pockets to keep itself afloat, the year of greedy gameplays that wrecked markets, government bail-outs of distant men in suits, the trickledown theory turned absurdly on its head. In 2009, corporate bonuses finally threatened more column inches than benefit fraud. And so, no better time for the never less-than-engaged and usually engaging plays of Bertolt Brecht – airily sidelined by fashion for a few years – to re-emerge.
Brighton’s Otherplace theatre company apparently think so too, hence this custom-built arrangement of the eternal firebrand’s lesser-known material, alternating song and sketch for a free-wheeling, fast-paced evening. We begin amidst the unsentimental rough and tumble of Berlin’s back streets and brothels, and zig-zag from there through pantomimic comedy to weathered monologue thru doomy torch songs. The company handle the material with confidence, as breezy as brassy – and that eruptions of laughter alternate with the sound of fifty people concentrating is a readymade rejoinder to those who’ve advertised Brecht in his absence as being drearily didactic or dramatically limited.
The first act climaxes with the coming of war, and an aggressively unsubtle, righteously functional little morality play, ‘Dansen’ (written while Brecht was in Nazi-inspired exile). Germany’s creeping pre-war annexations are played as absurd comedy, a political cartoon which trades shades and depth for comic clarity – the nation-size villain of the piece burlesqued as a wheedling, oily but ultimately officious and inhuman gangster repossessing a string of neighbourhood shops. The laughter comes effortlessly – and this is the first sign we may have wandered from Brecht’s purpose.
Insulated as we are by time-as-firebreak since WWII (plus knowing who’ll win), period ephemera feel like sealed historical documents – and so, jokes connect with an instinctive immediacy the genuinely sinister undertones can’t rise to. A recurring recording of coming thunder – passed off as hunger, then indigestion – hints at reasons to be uneasy, but perhaps could have been leaned on more to remind us late bystanders that witnesses died to make this allegory.
All this said (at some length), I try to make a personal policy of not complaining when things are improving – and Three and Ten’s decision to pull the dust-cover from the old pugilist when we need him most should be saluted – especially by any who fear contemporary theatre is often culinary-rebranded-as-gourmet. Consider this a first step which earnt its applause. What next? Well, cast and crew have proved able to tailor cabaret form to their audience – a second run of shows focussing less on reclamation of rarities and more toward application of parables to today’s problems is a prospect I’d head the queue for now.
kicking_k is a former staff writer and section editor of the further out, much-missed indie music monthly Plan B Magazine. Follow his realtime ‘adventures’ in the real world here: twitter.com/kicking__k Alternately, don’t.
Cabaret Brecht, Three and Ten, Brighton, 17 Nov 2009
Words: kicking_k
