The Truth, or Something Beautiful
✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Kip Williams A gangster film is projected on screen, as we witness it being shot on a sound stage. The action happens across not two but three platforms. We watch a film, the making of the film, and a theatre production, all simultaneously and frantically taking place before our eyes. Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui is concerned with artifice and image, wri
One Weakness and You Are Done For!
✮✮✮ 1/2 Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan Schaubühne | Berlin directed by Peter Kleinert Is it possible to be a good, upstanding person in today’s world or does the lust and corruption of those around us compel dishonesty and selfishness just to get by? These are the questions that plague the young prostitute, Shen Te of Szechwan. When through literal divine intervention she secures enough funds to open a modest tobacco shop, she must soon invent a cold-hearted male cousin
Pulse-Racing Brecht
✮✮✮✮ Brecht's Life of Galileo Young Vic | London directed by Joe Wright Block rocking' beats from The Chemical Brothers' Tom Rowlands set your pulse racing (or give you a headache) as you file into designer Lizzie Clachan's ingenious circus-arena-cum-planetarium. The Young Vic is almost unrecognisable in this modern take on Brecht. Trance-like video projections of the universe on the huge domed ceiling captivate half the audience who lie on cushions on the floor beneath. The
Lazarus Chalks Up Another Classic
✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Brockley Jack Theatre | London adapted & directed by Ricky Dukes "I once knew a High Court Judge who farted in company," one of the funnier lines goes in Lazarus Theatre Company's breathtakingly original update of Brecht's revolutionary classic, "just to show an independent spirit." Ricky Dukes' wonderfully frenetic adaptation and manic ensemble cast show independent spirit in spades. In a room above the Brockley Jack p
Bertolt Brecht and His Children
✮✮ Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack It cannot be denied that war is a part of human nature. We can certainly imagine a world with no battles, but history proves that it is in fact inevitable, that people will fight, over religion, money and land, no matter how catastrophic the results may be. We are however, resilient and optimistic, with a survival instinct that does not easily give in to threats and destruc
