A Man's A Man

The plays of the young Brecht are, essentially, an amalgam and a derivation. Not that the savagery and sharpness (or their intent) were borrowed: the rapacious soldiers and leering camp followers of A Man's a Man could not have been conceived by anyone else; yet they do most obviously have a model, the Kipling of "O, it's Tommy this an' Tommy that . . ." So too their spineless victim-- only he is patterned after, not Kipling, but Jaroslav Hasek's Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik--a book Brecht thought one of the "three literary works of this century which . . . will become part of world literature."

Brecht's intent, of course, in manipulating these characters of other writers was to break the barriers of the theatre of illusion (the "culinary theatre" he called it contemptuously), and they became basic parts of his 'epic' narrative methods. By 1924, when work on A Man's a Man began, he had added Pirandello to his list of influences: this act, as A Man's a Man shows, finally gave him the skills to shatter completely the culinary arts. The audience is now at arm's length, and the actors can themselves glide from impersonations, now assuming a new role (as Galy Gay, the soldiers' victim, is made to). then to be suddenly exposed (as is the soldiers' ruse, a fake elephant named Billy Hamph).

The intent of the plot, too, seems close to Pirandello. Galy Gay, the hero and victim, is an Irish dockworker in India (Itself another Kiplingesque amalgam: the time of the play is 1925, but Victoria has not yet relinquished the throne of England). So passive a character is Gay that the three soldiers can erase his individuality altogether--originally weak and insignificant, and a pacifist, he is made to join their machine gun unit to replace a man whose absence would expose the soldiers as temple robbers. Given the missing man's identification card, he becomes a ferocious super-hero who captures a mountain fort with five idiots. Anyone can be molded; no one is unique: Mann ist mann. (The dangers of attempting to preserve individuality are presented by another character, Sergeant Bloody Five: to remain himself, he is forced to castrate himself.)

The present version of the play has the influence not anticipated by Brecht himself: that of Mr. Eric Bentley, the translator, or "adaptor" as the program has it. Mr. Bentley's translation of a difficult text is a fair one, and a clean one, but he has seen fit to spruce up the play by adding several songs and an opening and closing chorus-line number more reminiscent of the English than of the Bavarian music hall.

And Mr. Hancock, the director, has, if anything, intensified this somewhat incongruous vaudeville element (wholly serived. I deem, from American productions of Die Dreigroschenoper): marquee lights glitter from the proscenium, news of each scene is projected on a screen from slides (a Ia Chaplin), and poor old Maggie Ziskind, cast as the Widow Leosadia Begbick, a saloon-keeping trollop, has to bundle up in ratty Lotte Lenya togs and belt out a couple of those sour songs that were Mrs. Weill's stock-in-trade. (The words for most of these songs are by Mr. Bentley, the music--as Wall-ish as a composer of Sing Musel can make it--by Mr. Joseph Raposo.)

I will not, can not, indeed, comment in extenso on the staging: the exigencies of Summer News publishing forced me to attend the dress rehearsal. Most of he acting will no doubt improve; much must it damn well better. "All feelings must be externalized," Brecht himself osculated to his actors: but this does not necessitate the nimble marionette mannerisms that too often characterized Peter Gesell's portrayal of the unmetamorphosed Galy Gay.

Of the four soldiers, two merit praise: Arthur Amsie's Polly Baker, growly, cigar-chomping, and shrewd, and Paul Marstow's (where would this summer's company have been without him?) Jeriah in the unfortunate temple robber betrayed by his mates. Tom Griffin is another one of the four; someday, perhaps, I will be able to understand what he is saying.

As for the others, Theodore Kazanoff is quite wonderfully snarling and self-contained as Bloody Five, and Maggie Fiskind, old trouper, swaggers and struts well enough as long as she doesn't have to sing.

Man's a Man, as currently conceived, is not Mann ist mann. But it is a rollicking noisy and important show. Do see it of course--but, oh yes, do, also, if you can, avoid rehersals