Bertolt Brecht (review)

There are a host of excellent English-language tomes about Brecht and his works (both in and out of print), but few of them approach the topic with the clarity, enthusiasm, and accessibility of Meg Mumford's new study. Her Bertolt Brecht is a well-written and evocative introduction to both the playwright and his works; and as such, it almost perfectly accomplishes the goals of Routledge's Performance Practitioners series, which aims to introduce important contemporary theatre luminaries to a student audience. Bertolt Brecht should be an excellent pedagogical resource for undergraduate-level courses and belongs on the shelf of anyone who teaches twentieth-century theatre and performance. The book should also be attractive to practitioners working with The Caucasian Chalk Circle, as the book provides a detailed study of this play.

Bertolt Brecht is divided into four sections that outline his life, his theories, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and practical exercises. Each section is roughly equal in length, and they combine to present a through portrait of one of the twentieth century's most important theatre figures. Throughout the text, the author playfully engages with Brecht's own writing style, often writing with a marked bias or perspective before calling attention to her deliberate employment of that point of view. For example, early in the first section, Mumford refers to Brecht's life as "both a condemnation and a continuation of stifling bourgeois habits" (4). She then inserts the subheading "Historicizing Interlude," where she asks: "What have you learned about the author's attitude towards her subject matter?" and later asks readers where else they see "the influence of socialist and feminist thought" on her position (4–5). It is a true Brechtian moment, where the reader is drawn into the narrative, only to then have the dominant perspective questioned during an interlude.

The first section covers most of the important events in Brecht's life, and Mumford successfully condenses a great deal of information to craft an entertaining account of his era. She summarizes Brecht's theoretical work in the second section, and this is the most valuable part of the book. Bertolt Brecht contains detailed and engaging explication of the finer points of his ideas, including sections on gestus, verfremdung, historicization, epic theatre, and dialectics. These explanations are perfect for the reader who is new to Brecht and are full of cogent examples from his works. The section is also augmented by a glossary at the end of the study, which further clarifies Brechtian terminology for the neophyte. Section 3 contains a lengthy account of the Berliner Ensemble's 1954 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, featured as model, which serves as "a spectacular embodiment of Brecht's passion for collective creativity" (91). Here again, Mumford makes Brecht's theoretical work apparent through specific examples, and her accessible account should appeal to students (and their instructors) who are reading the play, as well as to practitioners who are contemplating a theatrical production. Mumford's fourth section of the text details a series of practical exercises designed for use in both the classroom and the rehearsal space, including significant commentary from the author to place them into proper context. These exercises should be immensely useful to teachers of both dramatic theory and acting, as they are both educational and practical and succeed in bringing Brecht's theatre to life.

Throughout the work, Mumford draws upon her own extensive scholarship concerning Brecht, in addition to the works of the major Brecht scholars, colleagues, and translators such as Willett, Manheim, Ewen, Weber, and Lyon to provide a relatively thorough introduction to the subject. More interesting are those scholars whose work she does not choose to highlight: Martin Esslin, Eric Bentley, and John Fuegi. That there is no serious discussion of either Esslin's or Bentley's important works about or relationship with the author is puzzling (the former is not mentioned at all, and the latter is acknowledged as one of the two primary English-language translators of The Caucasian Chalk Circle). Mumford's...