Stephen Drabicki (left) and Fareeda Pyracha Ahmed face off for “Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar” in “Brecht on Brecht.”
German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a world traveler—not by choice, but by conviction. His larger-than-life, highly controversial career caused him to flee Nazism and take refuge in several countries before he was granted permission to settle in the United States. The Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) production of Brecht on Brecht tracks the playwright’s odyssey using his songs and writings, which include The Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo, and Mother Courage and Her Children.
The script, arranged and translated by George Tabori, masterfully captures the paradoxes in Brecht’s life and in his works. The company’s artists, who bring them to life in verse and song, are consummate professionals who happen to be disabled, rather than disabled people who happen to be working as actors.
Perhaps Brecht’s most famous collaboration was on The Threepenny Opera (1928) with composer Kurt Weill—later, like Brecht, an émigré from Germany. It typifies Brecht’s use of satire and song to critique both the excesses of Jack Macheath (a.k.a. “Mack the Knife”) and the corrupt protection rackets that exploited London’s poor. The TBTB ensemble’s rendition of the song “Mack the Knife” is one of the revue’s highlights. It underscores Brecht’s ability to convey tragedy through irony and humor, and to transform a powerful social commentary into relatively light fare.
Pamela Sabaugh (standing) and Scott Barton.
Theater Breaking Through Barriers’ cast can transition from virtuoso solos (chanteuse Anita Hollander excels at this, particularly in “Barbara Song” from Threepenny), to a poem from Mother Courage, “Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar” (the desperation of a teen mother, poignantly portrayed by Ann Flanigan and lamented by the ensemble). The cast of nine can emulate the seductively decadent German cabaret style of the 1920s, with the ensemble gathered at the upright piano, and, earlier in the performance, transition seamlessly from Brecht’s declaration of his own defiance to prose from Mother Courage.
Brecht nurtured and disseminated unforgiving views of capitalism. His empathy for the downtrodden and despised pitted him against Hitler and later, in America, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, two virulent demagogues who manipulated public opinion to destroy their opponents. TBTB’s performers, echoing the words of Brecht, a political dissident, a pragmatic, serial womanizer, and a scathing critic of Nazism who mocked Hitler’s despotic stranglehold on Germany, persistently refers to Hitler as a “housepainter.” As ensemble member Stephen Drabicki chants:
…And while the housepainter kept howling inside the Opera House,
Heard through the loudspeakers by all the peoples
Of the world,
Slowly and simultaneously…
Yet, although Brecht’s own poetry and prose affirm that fighting injustice through activism dominated his energies, he could also be a doting father who celebrated the wonders of nature with his son, and a successful lyricist.
Director Nicholas Viselli keeps the staging simple and efficient, in keeping with Brecht’s scaled-back theatrics. Prior to the performance, each actor introduced his offstage self and his or her signature prop. In most cases, performers used a scarf or a hat of varying colors to become a variety of characters.
Drabicki with performer Sean Phillips. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
The production’s fluid backdrops segue back and forth in time, from Germany to the United States. Photos alternate between representations of him as a young, idealistic poet and essayist and as older and more jaded. Perhaps the musical’s most haunting moments occur when photos and recordings of Brecht’s testimony before McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) are projected, circling from the intellectual and artistic repression of Brecht by Nazism to his flight from the blacklisting of intellectuals and artists in America.
The show is billed as a celebration and, on the script’s cover page, as an “improvisation.” While it is both, it is something much deeper. Viselli explains in the playbill that the company staged Brecht’s work in spring 2002, shortly after 9/11, and his current, restaged version serves to connect Brecht’s travails to some of the same issues that remain unresolved today.
Although many would say that Brecht’s solutions for society were both infeasible and flawed, TBTB’s Brecht on Brecht and the stellar cast are a credit to Brecht’s humanity. In Brecht’s own poetic words (from “Concerning the Infanticide, Marie Farrar”), he counsels:
Therefore, I beg you, check your wrath and scorn
For man needs help from every creature born.
Brecht on Brecht, the story of an artist and intellectual whose work was considered degenerate and threatening in his time, joyously reflects a cornucopia of the human condition across societies, and why that help is imperative.
Brecht on Brecht: A Celebration of a Life Lived in Defiance plays through Nov. 20 at the A.R.T/NY Theatres (502 West 53rd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday and at 8 p.m. Thursday–Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. All tickets are $50 and can be purchased at tbtb.org. Vaccination and masking are required; for further information, call (212) 243-4337.
