Bertolt Brecht's Art of Dissemblance by Tony Calabro (review)

Book Reviews TONY CALABRO. Bertolt Brecht's Art of Dissemblance. Wakefield, NH: Longwood Academic 1990. pp. xv, 158. $25.00. This book sets out to challenge Brecht's stature as one of the foremost dramatists of our century, From the start, Calabro faults Brecht's politics as well as his personality. He maintains that the "Brecht industry" is a sham instigated by left-wing academics whose stock-in-trade is rubbish. He scorns Brecht's admirers, referring to them as hypocrites whose "predisposition to egalitarian euphoria was not at all dimmed by the events (of] Tiananmen Square." Calabro perceives a connection between Brecht's "demagoguery~' and the "cult of personality:' associated with that of Stalin, and even finds "a striking parallel" between Brecht and Hitler. And this is just the preface. '-The book consists of three pans. The first is on Brecht's character, and deals with ".aspects of his life that are "inexorably linked" to his dramatic theory; the second .analyses the plays chronologically; and the final two chapters conclude with a view of Brecht's influence on the contemporary theatre. The portrait of Brecht that emerges from this book is one of a hypocritical man who "preached water and drank wine." Calabro grudgingly admits Brecht's natural playwriting talent. Brecht the man, however, was ruthless. his selfishness coming "at the expense of friends and strangers whom he manipulated and cheated." Calabro is equally unflattering in his treatment of Brecht's Marxism. He claims that because communism - "the piJIar upon which his entire life's work is built" - is fraudulent and corrupt, the validity of Brecht's basic doctrines, which "led to the creation of his plays." is "tremendously weakened. and his drama suffers." Calabro continually relies on anti-communist rhetoric to justify sweeping generalizations. The folly of Brecht's dramaturgy is apparent to Calabro in the performances of the Berliner Ensemble. Here he inveighs against the stale, museum acting of the Ensemble . where one is "overwhelmed by a tremendous sensation of fixity." While watching the Ensemble perform, "one waits anxiously for some Velfremdungseffekt, but aU one • gets is some good acting and some bad acting, mostly bad." Calabro's depreciatory '. remarks are, on the whole. unsupported. He insists that contemporary Gennan directors have rejected Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble; he carefully cites only criticism, and not support of, Brecht's theatre. We are left wondering if anyone srill attends performances of the Ensemble. Calabro raises numerous objections to Brecht's theories. He criticizes, for example, the playwright's insistence that theatre be devoid of emotion and instead made to resemble a sporting event, a kind of smokers' theatre where mutual camaraderie allows for an objective view of the performance. Had Calabro read the Messingkauj Dialogues (unlisted in (he bibliography), he would have found Brecht's emp~asis on the place of emotion in the theatre. Moreover, Calabro's assessments far too often depend on translations and secondary sources. Calabro opines that Brecht's first play, Baal, is his best, a "raw, and violent work" which contains "something wildly spontaneous ... [and] refreshingly unorthodox." From that point, his playwriting skills are said to have declined, although Calabro praises Mother Courage. saying that it is an "impressive work. and despite his 588 Book Reviews intentions Brecht fails to suppress our compassion for Courage's suffering." As for Brecht's grudging acceptance of empathy in Mother Courage, Calabro writes: "Poor Brecht. ... The humanity of the poet gets the better of him, and be is upset." Such sarcasm typically gets the better of Calabro; he attempts to discredit Brecht in both bitter and sanctimonious tones. Whatever observations he has to offer quickly lose critical value, becoming mired in personal diatribes. Calabro grinds his axe to the handle. He looks disapprovingly at Brecht's manipulation of character for Veifremdungseffekt. In Leben des Galilei, for example, Brecht's alterations of the text are a "politically wishful reading of Galileo {and] a contrivance created by an ideologue who had long succumbed to the narcotic of Communist ideology." Calabro overlooks the possibility that Brecht's alterations are likely the work of an author attempting to lay bare the urgency of the nuclear age, thereby deepening the plays...