THE GLASS MENAGERIE - Tennessee Williams

Moving from "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder to "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams proved to be a very smooth transition. Both feature a narrator/participant, a fourth wall breaking provider of exposition. Thornton Wilder "Our Town" was written in 1938, "The Glass Menagerie" in 1944 so I wouldn't be at all surprised if I found out Williams was influenced by Wilder's play. They had the same initials after all... could they possibly have been the one person? No they couldn't, I'm just tangenting to entertain myself. Which I should stop doing because I'm TRYING to keep these blogs smaller so they don't chew up so much of my time.

The story

First of all, while it's true of all of the seminal and influential playwrights I've reviewed to date that they give greatly expanded stage directions and scene summaries, I think Williams takes the cake. He writes lengthy but gorgeous, almost poetic prose to describe the scenery and backstory of characters, the depth of that is perhaps lost on audiences who haven't read the script. It's an encouragement for directors and actors to recreate the vision he has, and I'm sure many try. I think it makes for a fuller understanding of the play as the playwright envisioned it (and I'm very Team Playwright when it comes to delivering visions), but again, you'd miss those written embellishments if you only saw the play.

The Wingfield family is a family that, each in their own ways, wish to escape the life they lead.

Tom, who works at a shoe factory (is this an allegorical element about his father, and himself, walking away? You decide), is a growing lad with all of the growing pains that come with it. He wishes to be a writer but feels stifled by his circumstances and escapes when he can to the cinema to see movies. 

Tom lives with his mother, Amanda, an ageing southern belle originally from Mississippi, who always seems to be on the edge of saying "I do declare" or sipping a mint julip. She endless recounts her popularity as a young single woman and her repetition of her former status and memories is her way of escaping her reality. She feels her life now is lesser than the one she grew up in, which she wants not only for herself but also for her kids. As a result she can be quite demanding and judgemental. But her devotion to them, which is occasionally overlooked and unappreciated by the children, sadly leaves her resenting them at times (she says as much in Scene 2).

Also in the house is his sister, a shy and very anxious young woman who is very self conscious about her limp and how she presents publicly. For her escape she owns a menagerie of animals made of glass, inanimate friends that she can focus on... her favourite of which is the unicorn, which she sees as beautiful for it's uniqueness and differences from the other glass horses and other animals... a positive spin on how she feels less beautiful for her own differences. 

Tom's father deserted the family some 16 years before the start of the play and his absence is keenly remembered and noted, as attested to by his framed photo displayed on their living room wall.

Amanda continues to relive her past, remembering how she was a very popular belle of the ball with many gentleman callers (the original name of the play), and she wishes the same for her daughter. I'm going to circle back to the male callers aspect in a little while. But, while Amanda is a large, presence commanding character, quick to tell both her children of their faults, she is also keen to set up her kids, for the future, especially evident in her trying to find a suitor for Laura. 

They are essentially a family making the best of  their situation, escaping in their own ways.

[Spoilers]

After much prompting from his mother, Tom asks a work friend, Jim, to have dinner with the family one night. Despite genuinely wanting suitors to attend her daughter, Amanda steals the attention, seemingly wishing to show that she is still the most popular girl, although stealing the attention may not be the correct description as anxiety-ridden Laura stays in her room and feigns sickness.

A blackout throughout the course of the night, caused by Tom not paying the electricity bill, leaves Laura and Jim together. At first painfully unresponsive, Laura becomes more talkative and even admits to seeing Jim several times in a play, returning to get his autograph that she routinely lacked the nerve to approach him for.

Possibly prideful and emboldened from the recognition and distant fan worship, Jim becomes more engaged with Laura, telling he that she is attractive, and that her limp is minor, and that she should stop feeling inferior to people. he asks her up to dance, kisses her cheek but in the dancing accidentally knocks over the glass unicorn, her prized possession, and breaks it's horn off. She covers her sadness and gives him the hornless unicorn... equal parts a thoughtful gesture but also acceptance that it is no longer special.

From this point, Jim regauges his interest, telling Laura she is like a sister, that his feelings to her are brotherly, and confides that he is actually engaged, and that he must go. Finding out that her son had brought home an engaged man infuriates Amanda, and her fury proves to be the final straw that inspires Tom to leave his family as his father had, finishing the play on a wistful and more bitter than sweet note. 

The versions I saw

Unlike Becht's work, Williams main plays seem to be in constant rotation and there are a number of versions you can access for free or for cheaps.

The first version I saw was a staged by the Cornerstone Theatre Company in 2025. It's actually a very respectable version. No actors names are provided, so I'll just refer to them as the characters.  The mother in this version plays Amanda as a very southern, a middle aged woman. Big, brassy and attention seeking. The actor playing Tom seems a bit uncomfortable (even moreso than the role calls for), the person playing Jim more confident, and I thought the young woman playing Laura was a stand out. Her subtle shift from nervous anxiety to softly spoken and much more engaging is slow and nuanced. It's a good rendition of the play, although the music used and the way in which it's used is interruptive and annoying rather than serving the production.

Also (and here's a segue) the cigarettes used, presumably fake, are long, massive strange looking things. Here's why it's a segue. Many writers love to use smoking in their plays as short hand to characterisation. My favourite Australian crime writer, Peter Corris, has people lighting up on every second page as do many writers I like. I'm not a smoker, although I can handle the mentions in a story, but if it's that frequent it's disruptive and feels like lazy stereotyping and mood creation. The frequency of the smoking, the weird looking smokes and the actors apparent discomfort with either smoking or just smoking these particular cigarettes destroyed some of my disbelief suspension.

The other version I saw was the 1987 film directed ironically by Paul Newman (ironic, if you count the fact he played the narrator/character in 2004 production of the last play I reviewed - "Our Town"). Newman's wife, the tragically underutilised Joanne Woodward as Amanda, who plays it a bit more serious and a fair bit less broadly southern than the other version, and very delicately and sympathetically when Tom turns on her and berates her. Karen Allen (yep, Indiana Jones, Starman, Animal House etc) plays a frail and quiet version of Laura and, quietly, acts as the spine of the story. And, in one of his earlier films before he become much imitated and parodied, John Malkovich stars as Tom in an alternately subtle, sweet and gentle then angry, richly dramatic and sarcastic Tom. 

There are other versions, and it is handy to see a stage version as that's how the script was designed, but this film version helped my understanding of the play considerably.

My thoughts

It's a well-crafted story. I particularly liked how some elements are left to the audience to decide. Did Tom actually go to the movies very often, or to bars as seemed more likely? Did Laura have polio, and maybe even ASD? Did Tom not pay the electrical bills because he was saving money to leave? Was Amanda's clear flirting with Jim just falling back on old habits and filling in for the absent Laura, or would she have seized Jim for herself at Laura's expense if he seemed interested? Was Jim really ever engaged or did he pull that out as an escape strategy? I like there is room for the audiences minds and assessments to wander.

Despite this being autobiographically inspired, certainly some elements are exaggerated, edited or merged from Williams' own experiences. "The Glass Menagerie" was clearly a passion project for him, starting life as a heavily autobiographical short story "Portrait of a Girl in Glass", before being repurposed as the play "The Gentleman Caller", and then finally expanded into it's final form as a full length play. 

Williams coined the phrase 'memory play' to describe it, and even have his character/narrator Tom (a not-at-all veiled approximation of Williams, who was christened Thomas at birth before taking on Tennessee as a pen name) explain what that is. In describing this method of story-telling, Tom compares it to the work of a stage magician... "He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."

For all of that, I didn't really get a new feel for a `memory play'. Maybe upon greater study that will come to me, but on a first run through, it seemed like a play. Perhaps the "truth in the form of a pleasant illusion" is a disclaimer by Williams that come of this has been heightened, exaggerated, left our, merged together or made up. Yet I feel that's the case with any story that is autobiographical, or semi-autobiographical. That's my way of saying that I don't feel I know any better what is meant be a `memory play' than I did before hand.

But it's a good story, and it's enjoyable, and it's well written (as I said before, including the bits the audience doesn't get to read). I did like the deployment of the narrator/character device, used sparingly and a good connector and commentator between bits. The story itself is small, in that it doesn't seek to comment on the world, or human nature to any great extent, just a well-written tale that some/many folk will find familiar and accessible. 

I think I struggled a bit, and it's not a big deal and it might just eb a case of being from a different time... I struggled with the concept of gentleman callers. And not the concept per se, so much as Amanda's expectations that there should be a regular stream of them. Was this a common thing? And how would they know to visit? Not from Laura who is essentially a shut in. I bring this up because Amanda seems a bit judgemental about it... and a bit boastful at how much better she was at attracting gentleman callers. Not a major point, but just something that isn't a thig today, and may not have been in Amanda's later years either. 

But back to the play. It's another very popular play that many famed actors have beaten a path to get to. That must count for something. It's very much an actor's play, and I could see local actors keen to bring it to stage locally. 

Again I liked this play, I liked the closeness of family conversations and frustrations. That's not a criticism, just some plays hit more than others. I thought the writing was wonderful, both the background descriptions and engaging monologues, and with this his most personal story out of the way, I look forward to what fresh ideas he has next.

Materials accessed:

• "The Glass Menagerie" - script (1944). Available at many online sources including at Weebly.
• "The Glass Menagerie" - flm (1987). Freely available on Youtube(i)..
• "The Glass Menagerie" - filmed production (2025). Freely available on Youtube (ii).

OUR TOWN - Thornton Wilder

Before I even get into it... I really enjoyed this play. One of my favourite in the project so far. But first, let's get to that outcome.

"Our Town" is a play whose name gets bandied about a fair bit. I've heard people, mostly actors, mention it fondly as a play they'd been in as an amateur or during school theatre. I don't know exactly what I expected...maybe something twee and sweet, maybe a vibe or setting something like the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" (I might add that is a fantastic movie and not at all pale or vapid).

The setting IS from a similar era ... it presents a 13 year sweep from the the beginning of the 20th century and alludes to events in the years that follow. It also has a focus on small town living, neighbourly neighbours, simplicity and the importance of every day things, so there are some similarities. 

It covers a number of related themes but the central one for me was that we should make the most of every moment. As Ferris Bueller might say: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. (Chicka Chick-ahhhh).

"Our Town" is set in the fictional town of Grover's Corners New Hampshire and the play is told across three time-aligned and thematically-distinct acts: Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and Death and Eternity.

Grover's Corners is a simple, quiet, friendly town. Founded in the 1600s, some of the family names from back in the day are still around and still prominent. Two families are shown in particular detail... the Gibbs family and the Webbs. ([Light spoilers] There is a pending relationship that will unite the families, there will be joys, and sorrow, and loss. There will even be reflections from the afterlife that lean into "It's a Wonderful Life" and even "A Christmas Carol," although the `moral to the story' angle is less specific and heavy handed. We all waste time on Earth.

The message and the manner

There are some salient messages in this play, but what grabbed me was the manner in which it's told. Some of the references I make will be to the 2003 Broadway Production (starring Paul Newman, no less), however the story telling techniques I refer to are written into the script and feature (presumably) in every production.

The stage is set very barely. Two tables and some chairs, if you're lucky. Characters, when on stage, mime actions (sweeping, pouring milk, lead a whinnying horse etc) and in many productions those actions are supported by sound effects.

A key element of "Our Town" is the omniscient Stage Manager. He (in this version, but in other productions could equally be she or they) addresses the audience directly, provides a brief biography and travelog of the town, letting you know where the main points of interest are and who some of the key people are, makes some brief stage directions "for those who think they have to have scenery," and set the play in action.

I found the combination of the interjected narration guiding us through the story (and also giving us a peek into the future), the simplicity of the set and the miming of actions added a real stillness to the play that drew me in more than I expected. I know old mate Bertolt Brecht was a big fan of breaking the fourth wall and guided commentary but he also hated people being drawn to characters or suspending disbelief, and this is very much not meant to be subversive or political or deconstructed. Two examples of how a theatrical element can be used... and I much preferred this usage of fourth wall breaking.

Watching the play

Watching this play (I have to confess, I only read a few pages of the print copy to check the sort of stage directions used) reminded me of the feeling I had when I first saw the film "Citizen Kane". It was very very old when I saw it (believe it or not, it's even far older than me) and I couldn't believe how adventurous, novel and experimental some of it's story telling techniques. And I'm sure that sounds patronising, but I guess I had an opinion of what was being done cinematically at the time and this was far in advance of that.

I had the same feeling with "Our Town."

In some ways, it broke the prevailing mold of theatre at the time, gave people a different theatrical experience and yet still made very personal, maybe even intimate connections.

I mentioned the 2003 filmed Broadway version with Paul Newman in the lead.  It's honestly as food as any role he has played. I went back and watched it again (and the two other versions I saw... I will get to that later). Newman's stage manager was like everyone's uncle, everyone's grandfather, and his delivery of subtleties and shared confidences elevated the role. 

Now, I am a terrible actor and the world is better off for me removing myself from the stage. But this role is the only dramatic role I can think of that I'd like to have a go at... not because I would do it well, but because it is so well written. Its monologues are perceptive, and maybe a little didactic, but a little like listening to life goals from a beloved mentor. The role has not the bombastic power of Hamlet or Macbeth or even Colonel Jessup. Instead, it's power lies in it's familiar, colloquial and engaging performance. 

My favourite line, from Act III, when Emily  asks "does anyone ever realise life while they live it... every, every minute.", the stage manager replies "No. Saints and poets maybe... they do some". Love that. Just honey for my ears.

In any version, the role is already part stage manager and part narrator... and possibly even a version of God with his ability to return people from the afterlife and come to final conclusions about life. It would be good in many actors' hand, I'm just saying Newman nails it. This version, I may add, also featured Jane Curtin (SNL and Third Rock from the Sun, Jayne Atkinson and Jeffrey DeMunn (you'll recognise them if you see them... an exemplary troupe.

Other versions

It's a very popular play and so there are quite  few versions to choose from. The oldest I could find was the film adaptation actually screen-written by Thornton Wilder himself, so you know the script changes were approved.  Made in 1940 with and directed by Sam Wood with William Holden in the key role of George Gibbs (boyfriend then husband to central character Emily). It foregoes the simple staging, doesn't have need for  bare stage or miming, and in fact uses some very clever (especially for its time) cinematography, especially in then opening introduction by the now-stageless stage manager, and at the end with several souls conversing in the afterlife. And, spoiler, a key figure doesn't die... which again, Wilder approved because he wrote the change. I quite enjoyed this very different take.

The other version I saw was the 1989 Lincoln Center telecast with Spalding Gray as stage manager, and featuring Frances Conroy, Eric Stoltz, Penelope Ann Miller an (a favourite of mine) James Rebhorn. It's also well worth a look, but in direct comparison with Newman's stage manager, Spalding Gray didn't carry the same gravitas. Maybe I should have watched it first.

And there are many versions I haven't seen but would like to. Remember I just mentioned Citizen Kane? Well its co-writer, director, producer and lead actor Orson Welles played the stage manager in the first radio production in 1939. Frank Sinatra has played the stage manager in a live television musical version 1955 (Newman was in that version as George Gibbs). Other actors to take on various roles in various productions of Our Town include Eva Marie Saint, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty, Helen Hunt, Michael McKean, Ed Begley, Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutsch, Katie Holmes and Richard Thomas among many others.

Final notes

So yep, I've become a massive fan of this play and maybe this was the antidote I needed after struggling with Brecht. The play picked up a Pullitzer Prize for Drama for Thornton Wilder in 1938 and he earned another in 1942 for "The skin of his teeth." Wilder had previously picked up a Pulitzer for his novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", making him the only writer to be awarded Pulitzers for both drama and novels. Maybe I've cut Thornton short and should have looked at more of his plays.

Famed playwright Edward Albee ("Who's afraid of Virginia Woolfe" - which I'll be looking at later -  among others) called this the greatest American Play ever written. Hmmmm. Look, I have my existing biases. I already know that, going into this project and not being familiar with many of these plays, that "The Crucible" was my existing favourite.  It still is, even after seeing this, but this play is definitely a contender to the crown and worth serious consideration for it's cleverness, it's sense of invention and the warmth and universal application of its message.

This is probably my favourite of the 18 odd plays I've looked at so far. I highly recommend it and would love to see it in Goulburn.

Materials accessed:

"Our Town" - 1938 (script). Versions available for free from various website, including the CDN website.

"Our Town" - 2003 (pro-shot video). Recorded at New York's Booth Theatre and available freely on Youtube (1).

"Our Town" - 1940 (film). United Artists movie, available freely on Youtube (2)

"Our Town" - 1989 (filmed stage version). Recorded at the Lyceum Theatre an available freely on Youtube (3).

 

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN - Bertolt Brecht

This play proved to be the toughest assignment for me so far. And the word assignment is pretty close to spot on. It FELT like a Uni assignment that I didn't enjoy, and kept putting off and as a result this whole 100 plays in 365 days is now well behind. So... let's knock it over.

I didn't like "Mother Courage and her Children" all that much. Partly because of my previously stated issues with Brecht, and partly because there are very few versions of this that I could find to watch. But I do think there's a good story in here... and maybe a good show just as it is... that depends on a good production. 

I might add, I didn't guaranteed I'd write a blog for each play in this series  (although I have done so, so far), just that I'd watch or experience 100 "great" plays in the allotted time. So I'll keep this thing brief so I don't lose all momentum.

The story (including spoilers)

This play was written in 1939 (on the cusp of the second world war, and largely as a response to Germany's  invasion of Poland ) and is set during the 30 Years War that raged across Europe between 1618 and 1848. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

As with some other works by Brecht, it was a collaboration, in this case a frequent close collaborator of Brecht's, Margarete Steffin.

The story takes place across a 12 year period, 1624 to 1636, with each scene representing a new year. The eponymous Mother Courage, real name Anna Fierling, has a trading cart full of goods that she pushes from one battleground to the next with her three children in tow, selling provisions to soldiers (and civilians ) from all sides. Since war is going to happen, she reasons, we might as well profit from it... maybe a little like Milo Minderbinder from "Catch 22" although much less successful.

Through a series of encounters and responses, Mother Courage's three children are killed.

- Her son Eilif is enlisted into the army (as part of a negotiation between the army an his mother). At first he is branded a hero for killing peasants and their cattle, only to later be executed for doing the same thing.

- Her middle child, referred to as Swiss Cheese, becomes a paymaster in the army. When invading troops arrive, he hides the regiment's paybox. He is tortured and declares to his torturers that he had thrown the paybox in the river. Mother Courage tried to pay a bribe for his release but upon hearing he had thrown the money away she tries to backpedal on the bribe and he is murdered. Out of fear of being punished as a conspirator, she doesn't acknowledge his corpse and it is abandoned.

- When invading soldiers are planning to invade the town she is in, Mother Courage's daughter Kattrin attempts to warn the townsfolk by beating a drum to sound the alarm but she is shot and killed in the process.

With her children all murdered, Mother Courage once again picks up her cart and continues to travel around, selling provisions.

Breaking that down

Contextually, the play was written following the attempted Anschluss in 1938 and the invasion of Poland in 1939. Brecht the basis of the story from a character created by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen that appeared in two of his works "Simplicius Simplicissimus" (1668) and "The Life of Courage" (1970), and built around it a searing  

Brecht designed it as a searing indictment of war, fascism, profiteering and opportunism, with a side order of religious partisanship and zealotry thrown in on the side, and his instincts for a great concept serve him well. The guts of the story are quite potent, and since wars are like buses in as much as, if you miss one, there'll be another in an hour, timeless. And these topics as grist for the theatrical mill are very much my jam.

But again, my personal issue with Brecht is the manner of his story telling. Having said that, I'm not against some of the complexity of his characterisation though. Mother Courage being presented unsympathetically as an opportunist profiteering from the way regardless of the cost to those around her is a brave, meaty choice. 

She is not without affection and caring for her kids, at least trying to secure Swiss Cheese freedom, before deciding to put herself first, and singing a lullaby over the body of her murdered daughter, but at several key moments she covers her own arse rather than her children's. It's a bit of an illustration of the biblical quote (Mark 8:36, and Matthew 16:26) "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul," which I particularly enjoy making that connection knowing Brecht's antipathy towards religion. 

Incidentally, while depicting both Catholics and Protestants unsympathetically, it is most often the Catholics Brecht uses as the harsher, crueler antagonists in this play which may be based on historical accuracy (I'm not well enough informed) or because of his own opinions on that religion.

But having Mother Courage torn between her safety, financial success and survival, and her familial loyalties, is I think the greatest strength of the story. And clearly that's intended... her name is in the title of the show and clearly it's primarily about her journey, experiences and decisions. And something I do admire about Brecht (not something I say a lot) is that, in representing difficult "what would I do in this situation" dilemmas, he is willing to show the less-enlightened, less-heroic response which makes for a more powerful, impactful story. He discusses uncomfortable truths that can stay with an audience so kudos to Brecht for tackling difficult subject matter subversively.

It's just his desire to detach the audience from emotional connection, and his practice of trying to remove the suspension of disbelief (or should that be the encouragement of not fully engaging with the story) that drives me nuts. Yes, it's all very clever and post modern but in my terribly humble opinion it diminishes the impact of what I gladly concede is a potentially very pertinent and moving story.

I simply don't accept the premise that Continually reminding the audience, through fourth wall link pieces, overly bright lighting and other intrusive techniques to perpetually remind the audience that they are watching a play, and it's not real, and that they need to think (in order to promote taking action and make changes in their world) rather than emote improves the power of a show. I think it's ham-fisted dilettantism and a fundamental misreading, by it's practitioners, of the value of emotional engagement in theatre. But what do I know.

I guess it comes down to the performance

So... and I want to make my point clear... I believe Brecht has constructed the bones of a very powerful, thought-provoking and emotionally moving play. If he can only get out of his own way. If I had a director's cap, and I were to put it on, I would lean into the portrayal of a world in which a mother is forced into a life in which she felt driven to such cold, existential self-focus. Even when failing as a mother, there's a lot you can do with actor's and director's choices to show brief flashes of pain before returning to a more heartless exterior. And when she picks up her cart and continues after the loss of all three of her children, presents an opportunity for a particularly poignant and tragic realisation that her choices have led to this outcome juxtaposed with an indictment that war creates horrible situations in which we might all fall short of our best selves. To me, that's more powerful.

But not to Brecht. How do I know this? Frustrated by performances in 1941 in which he felt people over-sympathised with Mother Courage, he made changes to the play for a later production to no great effect. Despite his intent to remove an emotional connection to this very flawed woman who made decisions to ensure her profit from war and who stayed deliberately detached from crimes, audiences and critics made their own choices and this infuriated Brecht. To which I say, teach you to try and remove emotional connections from theatre. To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park, Emotions... uh...  find way.

And the thing that infuriates me about Brecht's infuriation is that these two things can be true. You can make Mother Courage is flawed and in some ways as unlikeable as you like (as was his intent), but people can still overlay their response with a wart-is-hell infused appreciation of the things people do to survive (which wasn't his intention). And the really great bit is that people can land on any spot on that continuum... from sympathy toward her to anger and disgust at her actions and choices... and that's fine. It hits how it hits. AND... none of that prevents Brecht's desire for plays to provoke revolutionary action. It doesn't need to be solely a thought exercise.

Seeing is understanding?

At this point I usually discuss a version I've seen or heard, which often explicates the written play better than the words alone can. These have often been professional productions and I felt free to be as unfiltered and, if I felt warranted, as critical as I wanted to.

Unfortunately with "Mother Courage and her Children", all I could find was a Community Theatre version of the play. That's been the case with some other plays I've looked at, and it hasn't been a problem because they were quite good (and as I've often said, Community Theatre is quite often of a very high, professional standard. Just because performers may live in a regional area doesn't reflect on their ability.

But this performance I didn't particularly like. Now, elsewhere, I have written a number of reviews of Community Theatre performances, and one of my my rules of thumb is not to avoid criticising aspects of these performances and rather focus on their strengths. So I wont criticise this performance (even though it's doubtful anyone connected with it will read these words) beyond saying it didn't bring out the story for me.

There IS a version coming up shortly (at least there was when I wrote this so it's probably past now)... at the Phoenix Theatre in Coniston (Wollongong) from Friday 10 April to Saturday 18 April 2026. I'd like to see it although I'm a little over-committed / over-spent in my theatrical consumption this year. But I do feel fairly certain I'd have a better appreciation for the play if I'd seen this version... or many other versions.

Conclusion

Many of the Plays in this series of 100 plays I'm looking at are described as "the greatest", or "one of the greatest" but at least one person... and that's not a surprise as that sort of critical regard is part of how the 100 plays were chosen. Oskar Eustis, who has been the Artistic Director of the Public Theater in New York City since 2005, regards this play as the greatest play of the 20th century, and possibly the greatest anti-war play of all time. Strong words. And apparently many others agree.

Again, I can see how it COULD be. The bones are there. But for my personal appreciation, I'd need to see a version of Brecht's masterpiece performed with Brecht's directorial style guide.

Where I had intended to see/study/review four plays by Brecht, I've made the call to cut it off at just two. The two I'm cutting are "The Life of Galileo" and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle". Both are highly regarded so fee free to seek them out. I'm stopping at two for a few reasons. 

Firstly, the works are exceedingly hard to find to watch and given the complexities of his approach to staging theatre I'd suggest it's crucial to see and hear his shows and not just rely on the words on a page.

Secondly, I have real issues with Brecht's approach to theatre. Obviously, he's a genius and who the hell am I. I'm willing to stipulate that for the record, your honour. But (a) I don't have to like him and (b) I'm quite free to say his approach to theatre is antithetical to mine and unlikely to change whether I read two or two hundred more of his works. Having said that, he has helped clarify my understanding of what I appreciate about theatre and that's not nothing.

And thirdly, as a result of those two points (the difficulty of finding his works, and my struggle with his messaging) I have found the Brecht section of my theatrical journey to be a real speed hump. It's made this part of this voluntary project a real punish, and slowed up proceeding considerably. To stay on target for my 100 plays in 365 days requires about two plays a week and this took two weeks to get to and to get through. It's like homework that you keep putting off, which makes everything else also behind and detracts from the enjoyment.

So, that's it for me and old Bertolt. If nothing else I am now more legitimately offer a slightly informed opinion about Brecht. I'm glad that I am now better informed and more greatly experienced, but parting in this case is not such sweet sorrow.

Fortunately my list of 100 plays is actually 106 plays long for just such a situation where I couldn't find or had to drop a play, so it's time to move on. Next up will be just one play by Thornton Wilder... Our Town, described by many (including playwright Edward Albee who we'll get to later) as, you guessed it, "the Greatest American Play ever written." I'm actually excite for this one. End scene.

Materials accessed

• "Mother Courage and her Children" - script (1939). Available for free at several places online including the "Academia" website.
• "Mother Courage and her Children" - video of theatrical production. This freely available video on Youtube doesn't mention the year of production or the name of the theatrical company.  

THE THREEPENNY OPERA - Bertolt Brecht

I've been dreading this. I studied Brecht a little at Uni and I didn't much care for his approach.  Sometimes going through "100 Great Plays" feels like doing homework, and that's how my approach to this play felt.

Brecht is quite into a deconstructed approach to theatre... suspending the suspension of disbelief... and he wanted the audience at all times to remember they were in a performance, and I think his "cleverness" sometimes interferes with the enjoyableness (enjoyability?) of theatre. 

I do like that he liked to subvert the expectations of theatre, and individually I like a bunch of his techniques and focuses. ..breaking the fourth wall, inserting music (which seems obvious to a musical theatre loving audience today, but there was a time where it was more obviously stepping outside of the realism of a situation), and using theatre as a forum for political and philosophical ideas that may lead to critical thinking and the momentum to make change in the world once the audience leaves the theatre. Big tick on that last item.

But there were approaches and attitudes of his that I just don't agree with. He advocated 'Non-Aristotlean drama', or epic drama, in which the works can be cut up into smaller self contained bits. He claimed epic dramas, he felt, had no interest in the any investment of the audience's emotions, doesn't have an objective or a finishing point and enables the drama to be show humans interacting with larger forces in society and not just each other.

He didn't want the audience to experience catharsis but wanted them left with uncertainty and conundrums (which, ok, the latter CAN be a very good part of theatre but so too can catharsis). He didn't necessarily want an audience to identify with characters. he liked employing disorienting elements like overly bright lighting. He wanted an audience to be reminded throughout that this is not real, it's a construction, as a way of echoing that our lives are constructions and so we are capable of reconstructing ourselves and the world around us.

Overall, when I was studying Brecht and at times since, when people reference him or rave about him, I feel it's a little bit like the emperor's new clothes, or when people are talking about Pink Floyd or Dire Straits... both of whom I like but the degree of reverence directed towards them seems a bit overstated. In short, while I like some of what Brecht is doing, I also feel he's a bit of a wanker. There I said it.

I also have an issue adding musicals to this list, and that's certainly not because of disliking musical theatre. I bloody love it. But if I include the musicals I love this would be well over 200 great plays and I'm not keeping up as it is. 

Also, "The Threepenny Opera" finds itself in a debate about whether it actually IS musical theatre, or is it Opera. I wont even go there because what do I know? But including this "musical" and leaving out so many ones that I think are far better doesn't sit well. However, I am trying to give due deference to what is widely regarded as one of the great plays, and Brecht certainly has a lot of disciples, so I will include this (as one of his most renowned plays) and a few of his other works for a sense of completeness. Note. I wrote this introduction before watching and reading the play.

The history of how the story came to be

The playwright's intent for "The Threepenny Opera" is a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Playwright in this case is something of a shared title. Brecht adapted this play from "The Beggar's Opera", written by John Gay (words) and Johann Pepusch (music) in 1728. It was a ballad opera, meaning it used popular musical styles, often spoken dialog and were performed to comic effect. This play in particular took the piss out of the love of Italian Operas by the well-to-do.

Brecht, using a translation by Elisabeth Hauptman, stuck with the original characters and plot and changed the libretto and quite a bit of the music, with the new pieces written by Kurt Weill and Francois Villon. And just on that, Brecht used the songs by Frenchman Villon, translated by K L Ammer, somewhat freely (ie without permission) and when criticised about it replied he had a "fundamental laxity in questions of literary property." Boo. Hiss. Am I getting into the fourth wall breaking enough?

So they've got the original piece and reworked it into German with some modified thematic focuses, and subsequently the revised work has been translated back to English (and many other languages). Kind of like money laundering, but with scripts. 

The Show itself

I have to say, I quite like the base story. MacHeath, or Mack the Knife (yep, that guy... and I'll come back to that) is the leader of a gang that robs and murders, commits arson and rapes. He's a calculating, dishonest, amoral and (quite bravely for its time) sexually ambiguous lothario, obsessed with sex and serial non-monogamy, and very selfishly focused on violence, money and power. Not the nicest guy. 

He falls for and marries Polly Peachum, whose father is also an underworld figure... in his case, the boss of a protection racket enacted by all of beggars in London. Jonathan Peachum controls his crew by coercion, threats and actual violence. Also not a nice guy.

Mr Peachum is not at all impressed by the marriage of his daughter to MacHeath, and has MacHeath arrested and sentenced to be hanged. But, with help from some of MacHeath's exes, and a Chief of Police who is a former army buddy, he is freed. MacHeath is later released and one's again faces the hangman's noose but a deliberately unbelievable deus ex machina royal pardon, helps him avoid the gallows and bestows upon him titles, land and riches, he avoids the gallows.

As I said, it's a good yarn. It includes good v evil stereotypes, some character trajectories, and a storyline that might run adjacent to "Oliver Swift", "Sweeney Todd" and "Jack the Ripper". And, musically, it has a couple of bangers. I did not know, before embarking on this play, that that musical nugget of golf Mack The Knife, sung by every crooner from Bobby Darrin, to Sinatra, to Buble and beyond, came from a play/musical, much less this one. You live and you learn. 

But back to the show. I enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated, and I will make separate comments about the versions of the show I saw. I actually think it was more enjoyable than I anticipated because Brecht didn't entirely stick to his blueprint for epic theatre. Where he believes that songs should be alienating and should disrupt the flow of the show, and should not create an emotional empathy with the characters, I felt they did those assisted the story and did build some connections with the character. He likes songs to highlight the difference between what a character says, and what they actually do and I didn't pick up on that so much.

Some of his guidelines for songs in shows were more evident. He felt musical numbers should be visually distinct, with different lighting and staging. He believed wanted singers to remain detached, for songs to explicate social meaning above personal emotion and he wanted the music itself to be harsh and dissonant to prevent the audience from being lulled into a nice melody. And in the versions I saw, these goals were successful, The music was jarring (I didn't care for that), the performers didn't display a lot of emotional connection (which felt more like directorial and acting choices that I didn't love) and the staging and look of musical numbers was quite distinct... and I liked that.

The versions I saw

One of the frustrating parts about covering Brecht's work is that it's a lot harder to find online. There are fewer film versions, fewer extant staged versions that have been recorded and the quality of those that they are is... variable. There was a National Theatre version with Rory Kinnear in the lead (which even toured Australia) that I think could well win me over much more substantially... alas, I could not find it.

The first version I saw was the 2015 production by New Line Theatre. I don't know anything about New Line Theatre and the video version on Youtube comes without many details, including the names of the performers. This version looked, as I mentioned before, like it could sit alongside "Oliver Swift", "Sweeney Todd" and "Jack the Ripper"... a very Victorian look. The band played, presumably deliberately, like an Oompah Band... lots of tuba and brass, and was (again, presumably deliberately) quite jarring in places.

Mr and Mrs Peachum were very close to the Thernardiers from "Les Miserables" in look, characterisation and performance style. The actresses playing Jenny Diver, Suky Tawdry and Polly Peachum were all quite good singers. I thought old MacHeath himself was an interesting choice... not as intimidatory as the script suggests and I think he got lost in the chaos a bit. There were a few good songs, but not a lot of standouts (possibly exactly what Brecht wanted?). It had a cohesive Victorian look and feel and  would no doubt appeal to fans of Gilbert and Sullivan, light opera and early musical theatre.

The second version I saw was spectacularly badly (and I'm assuming) illegally recorded. It seems to have been filmed from a phone with frequent weird and unclear zooms, and scans of black space at the person's feet etc. However the version it is filming, the 2006 Broadway revival, looks like it might have been amazing. With Alan Cumming in the lead and with Cyndi Lauper, Ana Gasteyer and Jim Dale on board, this version has a very different feel... quite punk and anarchistic There's a little bit of "Cabaret" thrown into the feel and a whole lot of subversiveness. 

Cumming is deliciously menacing and predatory, made even more emphatic by a harsh use of his native Scottish accent. He leans heavily into a more aggressive sexuality and is more openly sexually ambiguous, particularly with police chief Tiger Brown, opening up narrative possibilities. I didn't watch out the entire version as the gymnastics of the videographer was giving me head spins, but it did open my eyes and my mind to different presentation options.

After I had already seen all of the first of these two versions, and bits of the second, I found that there was a full cinematic version of this available to see, which I didn't initially see as it's labelled "Mack The Knife" (acknowledging that it's an adaptation and not a direct performance of the play. It was released in 1989 with Raul Julia (who'd previously played MacHeath on stage) up front and Richard Harris, Julie Waters, Bill Nighy and Roger Daltry in the mix. I hope to watch this as time permits.

My thoughts

I think the potentials of this show have won me over. While I don't love the music/songs and don't agree with making the music especially jagged and a few other Brechtian principals, I do like the storyline. And that's a whole angle in itself... if you're just this as a musical then you need to bring in that whole axis of assessment.

But I like that it is subversive. I liked the breaking of the fourth wall for spoken stage directions. I like that the lead is kind of unlikeable but at times, depending on the direction and acting choices, that you connect to him a little. I like it's flagrant sexuality. I like that the theme of capitalism and how those with power control those without is marinated throughout he whole piece. I really liked the deus ex machina ending that pokes fun at musical happy endings while still reinforcing the capricious misuse of power angle.

This is another play with an exceedingly long line of great performers who have appeared in productions of it. I'm still not particularly won over by Brecht, who I still think was a bit of self-important knob, or his guidelines for theatre, but I could very much see a version of this in Goulburn and that it would be quite popular. There really is a lot of room for a director and ensemble to put their stamp on this. And despite my misgivings, I do have to say it's a great and influential work. 

Brecht is still not my favourite playwright and I'm dreading the difficult online search for the other three plays of his I'm looking for, but this play has already moved the needle ever so slightly in my appreciation of Brecht.

Materials accessed

• "The Threepenny Opera" - script (1928). Available in several places online for free including this version from pdfcoffee.online.
• "The Threepenny Opera" - filmed play (2015). Part one of the New Line Theatre production freely available on Youtube. Part 2 also available. 
• "The Threepenny Opera" - filmed play (2006). Dodgy quality filming of the 2006 Broadway production freely available on Youtube. 
• "Mack the Knife" - film (1989). Cinematic production freely available on Youtube.