The Brecht Commentaries: 1943-1980 by Eric Bentley (review)

Book Reviews 577 ambiguity"? All this we find in a chapter which discusses plays shot through and through with the recognition of Marxism as a system of ideas which offers a unique way of understanding and changing the world, and one play in particular, The Measures Taken, which demonstrates impeccably where Brecht's real strengths reside - certainly not in the spreading of all-pervasive ambiguity. but in the giving of dramatic shape, plasticity and conviction to ideas and political ideology. Needle and Thomson'5 wisest words are reserved for the connections between Brecht's theories and his theatrical practice. They destroy some long-standing mythsabout the use of projected titles and potted summaries, for instance, as ways of eliminating dramatic tension and surprise - and hit the nail firmly on the head when they note: "The final expression ofhis theatrical theories was not the 'Short Organum' but the Berliner Ensemble...... This statement can only confinn the suspicion of anyone who saw Brecht's magnificent company at the height of its powers that Epic theatre is not the outlandishly different animal for which it is frequently taken. In directing us out of the morass of Brecht's often confusing and contradictory theories and towards the notion of a collective exercise in supple, uncluttered precision of production, movement and expression, Needle and Thomson's book makes its most valuable contribution to our understanding of Brecht. MARTIN KANE, UNIVERSITY OF KENT AT CANTERBURY ERIC BENTLEY, The Brecht Commentaries: 1943-1980. New York: Grove Press; London: Eyre Methuen 1981. Pp. 320. $17.50; $9.50 (PB). As the number of new Brecht books goes up by hundreds and hundreds, and I read a lot of unintelligible, badly written, and deliberately slanted guff on this controversial playwright/poet/drama theorist/state director, it is such a pleasure to find work as knowledgeable, appreciative, frank and well written as this new/old book of Eric Bentley's. It is old because much of the material in it has appeared before in scattered periodicals oras prefaces to Bentley's own translations ofBrecht's plays and poems. But it is also new because, published together, these scattered pieces have coherence, force, and vitality that are greater than the sum of the scattered parts. What emerges is a whole portrait of some forty years of the relationship between "the most adventurous drama critic in America" (Kenneth Tynan on Eric Bentley) and "the strongest, most influential and the most radical theatre man ofour time" (Peter Brook on BertoIt Brecht). This is the history of a love affair between two people, each strong, independent, self-assured and appreciative of the other - but not appreciative to the point of idolatry. Each had other lovers, and each was frank with the other about this. Sometimes they shared the lovers (Shaw and Marx would serve as examples), but in other cases each heartily disliked the other's circle offriends: Bentley could never bring himself to approve of Stalin, and Brecht could not approve of Bentley's favorable treatment of Ibsen in The Playwright as Thinker. On at least one occasion, Brecht, dissatisfied with the mixed company Bentley was keeping, sent an emissary to him (one ofBrecht's mistresses at the time, Ruth Bedau) to say unequivocally that Bentley should be more explicit in his commitment to his conununist friends and should renounce all others. When Bentley refused to do so, he was unforgiven years after Brecht's death in Book Reviews 1956. In the early seventies, Brecht's widow, Helene Weigel, told me, "Bentley is an explicit enemy of ours" - the statement is quoted in Bentley's book. The fact that Bentley and Brecht knew one another and worked together in one way or another for some fifteen years is important to a full understanding of the personal discussion of The Brecht Commentaries. but the fact of the Bentley/Brecht friendship should not blind us to the wealth of commentary on Brecht's work. The commentary is central and it is very good indeed. Precisely because Bentley has enjoyed a wide circle of intenectual friends, precisely because he has been equally at home in all periods of drama history and criticism, he is a brilliant...