The Theatregoer Jungle of Cities at the Charies Playhouse through March 15

BEFORE I learned that professional wrestling matches were crooked. I could never understand why the wrestlers fought or why the audience watched. As well as I could determine, each wrestler challenged the other-probably a stranger-with no motive other than a passionate, competitive desire to dump the other guy on his head and keep him there. For the audience, there was only the thrill of a dirty punch, and some half-hearted speculation on an obvious outcome. When I discovered, however, that the men in the ring were getting paid to perform, and that the audience knew what it was getting, my dilemma was solved and my faith in the rationality of man and his motives was restored.

Bertolt Brecht, in Jungle of Cities, assaults our faith in a rational system of motives and rewards. Jungle of Cities presents a challenge, a struggle, and a resolution-but no motivation, no rules, no explanations. It is what professional wrestling would be without the planned choreography and pay off. It is inexplicable in our terms; but the incongruities must be accepted.

Brecht slaps us in the face with these non-motivated actions in the first scene of the play. In the Chicago library where he works, George Garga (Michael Moriarty) - an honest, hard-working, family supporting, country boy-is offered fifty dollars for his opinion on a book. An Oriental lumber dealer named Scblink (Nicholas Kepros) has made the offer. Once Garga has been tantalized. Schliak follows up the offer by signing over his house, his business, and his money to the younger man in the hope that Garga will be ruined by power which he cannot control. Why does Schlink do it? According to our values, he seems to have no reason. Perhaps. Brecht suggests, he only seeks the satisfaction of pinning his opponent's shoulders to the mat.

The Charles Playhouse production of Jungle of Cities directed by Louis Criss, allows the questions of motivation to remain unanswered. In this way. Criss allows Brecht's message to be revealed at the proper time. The director has resisted the call for absolute didacticism and delicately guides his players through Brecht's beautiful and puzzling script and the labyrinthine set by William Trotman which mirrors it.

Because the motives behind each action are unknown, each character appears to vacillate between polarities which we can define. This difficult technique has been mastered by the entire Charles Playhouse cast. After the innocent Garga-from the "flatlands"-is burdened and corrupted by Schlink's business world. Michael Moriarty continually shifts from one aspect of the character to the other, presenting kindness, then bitterness; love, then hate. Nicholas Kepros is amazingly inscrutable as the ruthless Schlink, but Kepros occasionally reveals the affectionate, yet lonely and helpless man who dwells beneath this harsh facade.

THROUGH these internal and external ambiguities. Criss's production places the audience in a uniquely Brechtian position. The audience is not to identify, is not to personalize, is not to become individually involved with the characters on the stage. In Brecht's words, a member of the audience must be a "spectator"-a spectator who "takes up the attitude of one who smokes at case and watches." In this play, the characters' points of view are changed often. The spectator must be content simply to watch all of the events and to become involved as a viewer, not as a participant.

As the "ring-side" bell clangs the beginning of each scene, and the Madison Square Garden-type announcer describes the setting, we do become involved. It is not an involvement, however, obtained through narrow sympathy with a particular character. It can only be felt by realizing one's own intellectual and physical relation to the total action on the stage.

As the play ends, we find that the magnetic bond of combat which has continually drawn Schlink and Garga together is a product of the loneliness which each human being feels in the midst of a faceless jungle like Chicago. They must fight because they cannot communicate as people on any other terms. Brecht is showing us that we have developed a social system which-like Chicagoseparates, rather than unites, every man. "Human skin grows thicker and thicker." Schlink says, because of this system. This skin keeps people from knowing each other. The only force that pierces this, outer layer is one which lies outside the world of accepted motives and rewards-a force like the competitive spirit of the wrestlers.

For each member of the audience who is aware that he is surrounded by other men to whom he will not talk, this observation is electric. If Garga and Schlink cannot find a means of relating as individuals, can we do more? At this final moment, Brecht has brought together his audience and his play. Together we realize that we must define a new (??) of values; the old motivations no longer apply. Our lives must be crazy, irrational; we must find new ways of getting together within the jungle.

BUT HOW do we change? Must we die, like Schlink? Brecht calls death "the coldest answer." Do we keep on wrestling, like Garga? He is going to New York, but will probably fail and return soon. Shall we make love, like Garga's sister, Maria? She will never find real love.

Brecht is unclear about a solution, but recognizes the difficulty in making any change. As I turned to the lady sitting next to me and asked her opinion of the play, I too realized the problem. She looked surprised, then smiled and said. "Well, it was all very well done but I really don't understand what it means." I nodded politely and headed for the exit. Hadn't she ever seen a wrestling match before?