MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
Latest editorial
More light on the darkness
A revival of Bertolt Brecht’s chilling portrait of life under the nazis needs a clearer focus, says LEN PHELAN
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Fear and Misery of the
Third Reich
Union Theatre, London SE1
4/5
BERTOLT BRECHT’S reputation in this country rests largely upon productions of plays such as The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage or The Caucasian Chalk Circle, works in which he employs epic theatre techniques to “make the familiar strange” and thus lay bare the underlying contradictions of societies based upon ruling class exploitation and the ideological mechanisms underpinning it.
Written in the same period as these great works, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich is something of an exception in its abandonment of parable and historical revisionism to speak directly to audiences about contemporary events.
Similar stories
GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring
JAN WOOLF is beguiled by the tempting notion that Freud psychoanalysed Hitler in a comedy that explores the vulnerability of a damaged individual