Professor David Peimer
Brecht and Weill: Remarkable Theatre, Songs, and Poetry
Professor David Peimer - Brecht and Weill: Remarkable Theatre, Songs, and Poetry
- [Lecturer] Okay, so hi, everybody, and hope everyone’s well. And it’s a surprisingly amazing sunny day in Liverpool. So, we’re going to dive straight into Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. And I want to make this into a bit more of a celebration, a bit of a light, you know, in these dark times. And what they brought in their own times, I think through the music, through the songs, the lyrics, the kind of theatre they did is uplifting, even though the content is obviously about dark times. But the use of wit and irony, and the music is always, with Kurt Weill is brilliant, you know, American influence, jazz, riffs, and styles of music. After “Threepenny Opera,” I think it’s the music and the irony, the humour that lifted out of, certainly out of being anything vaguely, like a dark realistic play. The dark is there, but the form, if you like, is a lighter captivating form. So we’re going to put them together, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya and Brecht. Obviously, this fits in because we’re looking at the whole of the 20s and the 30s, you know, historically, in these different parts of Central Europe. I think also what’s happening is in Berlin, that this style of cabaret is coming out of the Weimar period, is an extraordinary explosion of cabarets, of breaking taboos, of sexuality, of gender, of race, of so many things, obviously happening in Paris and Berlin in a huge way artistically, and certainly with theatre and music, and with the arts as well, surrealism, Daoism, so many others that we know post First World War. And this is just a focus on a couple of examples of Weill and Brecht. And then I’m going to go in and show some examples of Lotte Lenya singing, Helene Weigel speaking about “Mother Courage” and the play, Judy Garland singing, and Louis Armstrong, Lotte Lenya, and Nina Simone.
So I’m going to show us just a couple of other interpretations of similar songs. And of course, the great, great Bobby Darin singing his absolute signature song, “Mack The Knife.” Okay, so to dive in, so Kurt Weill, he developed productions, as I’m sure people know, with Brecht, particular “Threepenny Opera.” “Threepenny Opera” was probably the smash hit of the 20s in Berlin, and coming out of the cabaret style, influenced by some American jazz and other styles of music happening at the time, and how Weill managed to turn it together with, you know, Brecht’s lyrics, how they turn it into a celebration, even though it’s about hard times, tough times; and the themes are serious about business and unemployment and jobs and hunger, et cetera; how they turn it through irony. And I go back to the Czech theatre I was speaking about before, the ironic voice in theatre is so powerful. The voice of satire needs irony. The voice of satire is about ridicule and wit. This isn’t about ridicules, but this is about wit, brought in, as I say, through the music. Okay, so first, and of course, one of the great songs that come out of “Threepenny Opera” is “Mack the Knife.” To put it in a broad sense, the aim of Bertolt Brecht to start with is to, in their phrase, what we might call today, “socially impactful” or “socially committed” type of theatre. I’m not going to use any more of the jargon, but let’s call it that in the broad way, a strong social consciousness and awareness, which really means a strong historical consciousness. And I’m going to go into that a bit more. when you look at Brecht theatre specifically and what made Brechtian theatre radically different to the realism, that had psychological realism that was developing in the English language theatre.
So, Weill grows up in a very religious Jewish family. His father was a cantor. He enrolled at the Berliner Hochschule fur Musik when he was 18 and studied composition with Engelberg Humperdinck. He meets Lotte Lenya, the wonderful singer and actress. They married twice in 1926 and 1937 again, after they had divorced in 1933. She supported Weill’s work unstintingly, and her commitment to his work and awareness of the social justice connections to his work, you know, we can see today still in the Kurt Weill Foundation, which she inaugurated. So we have the mixture of musical theatre and cabaret. That’s really the style going on with Weill and Brecht. They both really want a smash hit, and “Threepenny Opera” delivers it, hugely popular in the late 20s, early 30s, not only Berlin, but everywhere. The “Threepenny Opera” 1928 is a reworking of John Gay’s, “The Beggar’s Opera,” which was written in collaboration with Brecht. And I want to say here that the influence of Husick should not be underestimated, and I’m going to stretch a point, but of Kafka, through what I’ve tried to argue in some of these talks, is the wit and the irony, the humour Kafkas in moments of quiet despair, moments of loud despair of anybody in a society undergoing the massive historical change that Germany is undergoing at the time, and of course, other parts of Europe. Later, Weill worked with, with Kazan, with Clifford Odets and others when he went to America. Now, what’s really interesting about Weill is that unlike some of the other German emigrants who were forced to flee Nazi Germany and got to America, Weill did not continue to write, if you like, in the style of his European compositions or the style that others had. They tried to more or less follow the style they had already in Germany and other parts of Central Europe. Weill really studied American popular, American jazz, and stage musical theatre. And, you know, the greats of American musical theatre of the time, I don’t need to mention. Weill studied them.
And when you listen to, and what I love about it, you can hear, like he’s incorporated that into his compositions in the music. He’s gone as an emigrant, fleeing Germany, and Jewish, but absorbed, and perhaps this is, you know, it’s part of the old debate of the emigrant, especially the Jewish or whoever, going to the new country, the new land and assimilating, in his case, the Jewishness, but assimilating the music and the culture. And I know Trudy and others have spoken about, you know, how some of the Hollywood moguls, similar idea, assimilate with the, if you like, the mythical themes of the great American myth and the great American history, not only the cowboy, but the Western free spirit frontier, you know, striking forth, et cetera. So, what Weill does is that he not only studies but absorbs and incorporates all these aspects of American music into his, which is really coming out of the cabaret tradition of Berlin. He worked with Maxwell Anderson, he worked with Ira Gershwin, he wrote a film score for Fritz Lang in America. For his work on “Street Scene,” he received the inaugural Tony Award, the first ever for the best original score. He remained committed to the idea of, to use the loose term, which is being used today, of Weill being committed to a kind of “socially useful” music and lyrics, if you like, as opposed to, you know, anything more didactic. So, he kept that influence from working with Brecht. And he actually, he started to work on a satire with Oscar Hammerstein called “Schickelgruber.” I don’t need to say more. It’s about the Nazi war machine, about gifts.
Anyway, it’s a whole story that goes on. This is what Maxwell Anderson wrote as part of his eulogy for Kurt Weill: “I wish the times in which he lived had been less troubled, but Kurt managed to make thousands of beautiful things during his short, troubled despair full time that he had.” That’s Maxwell Anderson, who worked very closely with Weill on lyrics and music. Weill has been performed by just a couple of names just to give you: Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Sinatra, “The Doors,” Jim Morrison, Ella Fitzgerald, Bowie, the Metropolitan Opera, Marianne Faithful, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Sting, et cetera, et cetera. And there’s a Kurt for the Kurt Weill Foundation that I mentioned. Okay, so that’s just a way of brief introduction to Weill, and then a brief introduction, if you can, to the next slide, to Brecht. Thanks, Lauren. So Brecht is coming of age during the Weimar era, and of course, he’s writings “Threepenny Opera,” with Weil, as I mentioned. Brecht, as we all know, is emerged in Marxist thought and trying to bring a Marxist ideology into theatre. But Brecht, almost despite himself, is ultimately a theatrical innovator and ultimately a theatrical creator and never forgets the importance of entertainment and theatricality and doesn’t slip into, you know, didacticism. Some of his works are called the Lehrstucke, the learning pieces, which are intentionally didactic, but the great plays are not didactic, they’re human stories, and they capture in his way, which I’m going to come into in a moment, the kind of extraordinary theatricality that Brecht was aiming for. And the fundamental idea, and this is where it differs from English language theatre of realism at the times, which is concerned with looking at aspects of human nature possibly in historical context, like Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and others, slightly later after the war. But perhaps Eugene O'Neill would be the better comparison.
Whereas Brecht, Brecht’s main idea is that everything is historical. There is no need to look only at human nature or that things are destiny or God-given, but there is free choice, and therefore, that events are of a historical nature. And if they are, then of course, we as active human beings, can have a small or bigger influence to shift or change at least the perception, if not the historical event itself. And he tries to put this into the character and the story to show how the characters and the events in the stories are shaped by historical forces, not just by human nature, but where Brecht, as I say, is theatrical despite himself, is that he knows you can never get away from human nature. And inside the great plays, I think they’re actually driven ultimately more by human nature. And we’ll look at one or two of them in a moment. But the context is always an historical era, or the context is to, in the form of Brecht, is to remind us all the time, you know, we can be drawn in emotionally, but then you’ll throw cold water over the audience’s head, and we are brought back into reality. This is historical, this is choice. This is not forced in terms of destiny or God-given. So, if you like, his main idea, which he develops, of course, from Piscator, Max Reinhardt, and many of the great influences. He goes to America as well, he managed to flee, gets there, same as Weill. He was under surveillance by the FDA, the FBI, for many years, subpoenaed by the House of Un-American activities. Then he returns to East Berlin after the war where he establishes the theatre company, the Berlin Ensemble in East Berlin, an extraordinarily, brilliant theatre company which created such a reputation post the war. And he works primarily with his collaborator, wife, actress, Helena Weigel.
And of course, he had Elizabeth Hoffman, and there were other women who helped him amazingly, and hugely, developing stories and characters. He worked in a completely collaborative way, but always took the credit for himself and his own ego, let’s be frank. Brecht’s father worked for a paper mill and became the managing director. So these images of the working class Brecht aim true to the middle class origins of his upbringing and growth. Brecht often used to say that the two people he learned the most from were Charlie Chaplin and the clown Valentine, who performed in the beerhalls; the satire and power, the ridiculousness, the cabarets, et cetera. That he absorbed far more from those two in terms of theatre as he tried to incorporate some of his Marxist ideas. Okay, if we can go on to the next one, the next slide, please. So this is just one of his great plays, “The Life of Galileo,” which I’ll speak to you in a moment. And with working with Weill, you know, and the examples that I’ve given. This is one of his great famous plays, “Life of Galileo,” where Galileo… And he was fantastic at taking great historical figures and looking at the human and historical theme. So, what’s the main human theme? We know nothing about really, except for a few letters, of the internal life of Galileo. So we’re not concerned, like in English language realism, with the inner psychology of character. We’re concerned with character as social type. The great genius scientist, the extreme fascist leader, the Chicago gangster, the mother who has her children and is just trying to make a living through 30 years of war in Germany, pushing her waggon around various villages in Germany; the prostitute, Pirate Jenny, in “Threepenny Opera;” Mack the Knife, the gangster figure who is the killer. So these are characters as social type where Brecht will take out inner psychological complexity, which is much more akin to the realism of most English language theatre in America, England, and elsewhere of the time. and still of our times.
So, “Life of Galileo,” huge historical icon and the type and the stereotype, and what’s the main theme? Obviously, Galileo’s taken before the Vatican and told, “Either recant and go back on your word,” you know, about the earth and the stars and the sun and the movement, which moves around which? et cetera. “The earth is the centre, therefore God,” you know, and so on. We all know the story. And that becomes the central premise of the play. And we see Galileo at home with his family, with his daughter, and at the Vatican, and elsewhere. But it all hinges around that central dilemma, the role of the scientist, placate the powers that be or stick with your own scientific knowledge and drive to prove that the science is right, not the inherited religious belief, in this case. So, you know, scientists throughout history have faced it, and of course, in the 20th century, and you know, and other times. so one of the great classic dilemmas of Galileo, he takes out that great historical theme as well as human theme, and that’s what drives the character and the play. Again, it’s the history. Okay, if we can go on. These are just some images. At the bottom, there’s a stamp of, Brecht, you know, for Germany afterwards. We go on to the next one. Thanks, Lauren. The great musicals, you know, “Threepenny Opera,” which is about ordinary people trying to make a buck, trying to get by Mack the knife. Mack the Knife is, you know, the killer. Jenny is the prostitute. “Lost in the Stars,” based on Alan Paton’s “Cry, The Beloved Country,” which he wrote with Maxwell, and which Weill worked on with Maxwell Anderson. “Mother Courage,” “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich,” and “The Resistible Rise Arturo Ui.” “The Resistible Rise Arturo Ui,” one of the great plays and performed hell of often all over, basically simply using the idea of a Chicago gangster, Al Capone type.
And as a satirical metaphor for the rise of Hitler. You know, the small guy with huge ego becoming the big guy, utterly corrupt, using corruption, utterly corrupt to become power crazy megalomaniac. But it’s all done in satire, mirroring aspects of what he knew anyway of Hitler’s life. Okay, so if we can go on please to the next slide. Just to share with you a couple of the poems from Brecht. What I love about Brecht is that it’s deceptively simple language in the poetry. It’s so deceptive, and it looks like anybody could write this, but when you study it, you look at it carefully, it’s so concise, and he gets the main idea through in minimal words. And it’s almost like a haiku, it leaves you with the impact, you know, of a quick, short shot, poetic flash of an image and idea. “After the election,” and it’s always good that ironic double wit, “the secretary stated that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could only win it back by redoubled the efforts. Would it not be easier in that case for the cup of the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” One idea played with done in the dark times. “In the dark times, will they also be singing? Yes, they will be singing about the dark times.” Four lines. An unforgettable little poem for me. Okay, if we can go onto the next poem, please. And this is from one of his poems which I like. You have to laugh at the title. It’s so obvious. “Questions From an Employee Who Reads.” You know, there’s wit and there’s irony with an irony in the title itself. He’s obviously playing with being a highly educated intellectual in playwrights and trying to write poems, which anybody of whatever educational class can connect to. “Who Built the Pyramids? Did the pharaohs haul up the lumps of rock?
Great Rome is made of triumphal arches. Who built them? Young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone? Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him? Phillip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to eat? Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors? Every generation finds its strong man. Who pays the bill?” I don’t think it needs any further comment from me. You know, he captures it, but through the device of asking the question. So it’s never just a didactic harangue or an attack. He’s always playing with question, with satire, with wit, and with brevity of language. Okay, if we can go onto the next one, please. From “Arturo Ui.” “If he could really look, we’d see the horror in the heart of farce. He nearly had us mastered. Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat. Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” One of the great phrases of Brecht for me that I love, these six lines, “Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” Of course, it’s Arturo Ui in the play, the satire of Al Capone-type gangster, but obviously, it’s an allegory of Hitler. Obviously today, I don’t have to be, you know, it’s spelt out today, whether Putin or whoever, you know, is it Germany, another one to rise? Is it somewhere else? You know, the fascist, “the bitch that bore is in heat again.” In other words, the historical times that are wanting to give birth to the momentum of another fascist or authoritarian leader is never too far away. It’s always there waiting. And therefore, if democracies wish to try and survive, super aware, and super aware and vigilant, it’s always going to be, a union shadow is always there. Never forget it. Never ignore.
Okay, if we can, on to the next please. It’s “The Burning of the Books.” This is one of my favourite triumphal poem, one of my favourite ironic poems. “When the regime commanded the unlawful books be banned,” be burned, sorry. And he’s obviously talking about the burning of the books by the Nazis just shortly after they came to power. “When the Regime commanded the unlawful books be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads into the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged; he’d been excluded! He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fierce letters to the morons in power. ‘Burn me!’ he wrote with his blazing pen, ‘Haven’t I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar. Burn me!’” I love the way he twists the horror of burning books. And of course, as Heine’s said, “Where you burn books, eventually they’ll burn people.” But, you know, of the burning of the books, whoa, you know, he’d been excluded, “Burn me! Burn me! Didn’t I tell the truth? How can I be excluded from your list?!” So he turns the irony of celebration through satire an utter ridicule of power. And he forces us to always look and think in slightly different ways. And it’s a slight shift in thinking that I think Brecht aimed to achieve with his poetry and his plays.
You know, he was never naive to think, “You’re going to revolutionise or change society through theatre,” of course not, never. But you maybe get a tiny shift in a bit of thinking, a tiny shift in awareness. Things are historical, things are a choice. Even if you’re a writer, but your books aren’t being burned, you can make a point about the burning of the books and the horror in this kind of poetry, a satirical way. Okay, can we go on to the next, please? Okay, if we could start 1 minute 50 into it. This is an interview with Tony Kushner. He worked on the adaptation of “Mother Courage and her Children,” done at the National Theatre. It’s just a very few seconds of an interview with him. And sorry, Lauren, if you could cut it afterwards ‘cause I can’t hear it, but I can
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Had almost a strangely split mind between the academic part of him that wrote theory and the man of the theatre who refused. He would even, in rehearsal, say, “I don’t know what idiot wrote this theory,” or “I don’t know what idiot wrote this part of the play.”
I mean, that said, I think that what one gets from reading the theoretical work is somebody who is grappling with the profoundest truths about the theatre and the very heart of what we talk about when we talk about the equality that we describe as theatrical. He sees a creeping naturalism that he knows in part it’s going to come from the most unnatural of all media, from film. And he’s saying, “Don’t try and compete with this.” You know, “You’re going to lose. And it’s not interesting.” I mean, I think that what he’s really talking about is the essential dialectic of the theatre, which is that it creates an illusion that is both effective and not at the same time. That it asks you to believe deeply in something that you are absolutely aware is artificial and fake. And that you hold both of those feelings and awarenesses, belief and disbelief, in the same place, in the same impossible tension. And that you start to understand through theatre, I think he means to say, the double nature of reality.
But that’s what life is like. You know, you can have Leona Lewis singing with the boys-
Thanks, if you could hold it there.
out in Afghanistan. CLIP ENDS
Thanks, Lauren. If you can stop it there. Okay, thanks very much. So, Tony Kushner, I think he gets it in a couple of sentences really, really well, fantastically, you know, the ability to… We know, of course, it’s complete illusion we watch, and yet, you know, in Coleridge’s phrase, “the suspension of disbelief.” So we suspend disbelief, and we buy in, and we can let ourselves believe through imagination. This is real for the two hours of watching the play and then come out. And so what Brecht’s form ultimately is aiming at, I mean, these huge amounts of theory, I don’t want to go into now, but the main idea being Brecht will always take us in, emotionally, into the story, and then every now and then, crack us on the head and remind us, “Whoa, we’re watching theatre.” So we come from the heart to the head. And then a bit of that, and then take us back into the heart where we feel for the character, and we emotionally identify with the story. And then take us back out of it with a narrator or breaking up of scenes or technological devices or talking direct to the audience. You know, all these techniques of Brecht to, if you like, create what he called the “verfremdungseffekt,” the distancing effect, the estrangement effect, where we are hooked in emotionally and then come back to thinking. We’re not purely hooked into emotional identification with character for the two hours of the play. That’s psychological realism. For Brecht, we are in and out. And the way of doing it is to use the theatre itself. We’re in the emotion of the character, we identify, we are following, and then we stop, and we’re made aware we’re watching a theatre, think a bit of what’s happening, what’s going on, and then back in. So he’s trying to encourage a kind of thinking theatre.
He called it a theatre for a scientific era. And what Tony Kushner really, I think gets the nail on the head on, this is how the device he found… which, of course, goes way back to ancient times; it’s the Greek chorus. The Greek chorus in ancient Greek theatre 200,000 years ago would do exactly the same. They were the narrators, and they would step in, speak to the audience directly, “Okay, this has happened, that’s happened, this, that,” et cetera, et cetera, “This is what the character’s doing and feeling.” Okay, and then chorus goes off back to Agamemnon or whoever the character is, either person, whoever the characters are, Electra, and off. So it’s not new, it’s ancient, but in a contemporary way, it’s a powerful device because we’re in and out. And the extraordinary, the delicious insanity that I love about theatre is that it’s utter make-believe. It’s nonsense, it’s a joke. It’s complete imagination. It’s ephemeral, it doesn’t exist. It’s on the stage, and then it’s gone. You know, Shakespeare, “We are the stuff that dreams are made of,” it comes and goes. And it only exists in the imagination of the audience after. Even if you read it on the page, it’s not the same.
It exists in the imagination of… There’s no film to capture it, TV, internet, nothing. And it’s extraordinary, I think, relished celebration of the human imagination to create and imagine and to suspend disbelief. I know this is, maybe I’m talking like a school boy here, but you know, I’m constantly stunned by the human capacity to do that. And I think the more we do that, the better, in my personal opinion. Okay, if we could go on after Kushner, please. This is Helene Weigel, and you know, Brecht’s main, the wife and actress and collaborator, She acted in most of the plays. And here she has just a minute and a half of her talking and gets the essence of what her and Brecht try to achieve in the theatre.
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Intelligent. And looking at plays who are intelligent, they understand them and understand too that it’s not destiny, deity or kings who have the absolute power to change their life. Looking at small people like we do, like we play them in our theatre, maybe they learn a little bit to behave like thinking human beings.
Alright, David-
Thank you.
that’s the end of the clip.
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- If you could hold it there. Yeah, thank you. So I think she gets it in a couple of sentences, completely brilliantly, a little bit of a shift to her thinking. You know, recently we’ve seen the images in Liviv in Ukraine of 100 baby prams all put together in the square of the town, of the city, an extraordinary performative image. We saw the Russian TV journalist, producer, you know, jumping on stage behind the reader in Russian state news for five seconds, holding that placard. It’s only five seconds, but it’s an extraordinary moment of performance. And it’s not only protest, political theatre, et cetera, it’s an extraordinary moment of, if you like, Brechtian approach to theatre put into what’s already a stage performance, 'cause she’s a stage propagandist reading the news. So it’s these little moments, and Brecht trying to find similar devices all the time to highly innovative theatre to take us in emotionally and make us think and shift our perception very slightly. You know, I think what a lot of art tries to do, obviously not any theatre. Okay, if we can go on to the next one? And if you could just do it at 50 seconds. This is an image from a school in England some years ago who staged “Fear and Misery of he Third Reich.” Sort of show the opening image of what these school kids created.
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- [Presenter] Ladies and gentle-
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- Thank you. We can hold it there, Lauren. Thanks. If we can hold it there. Okay, if we can hold it. Thank you. Okay, so these are school kids in 2014, doing one of Brecht’s plays, an amazing image for me of how their imagination was captured by the play and trying to find a new, fresh visual way into staging it, the opening at least. Okay, if we can go on to the next clip, please? And this is a clip from one of my favourite actors, a fantastic human being and actor, brilliant Henry Goodman playing Arturo Ui in a fairly recent production made.
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Hi, I’m Henry Goodman, I’m playing Arturo Ui. He is feeling a grieved 'cause he’s not as big and powerful as he would like to be in Chicago as a gangster. And he wants to reach the top, and the best way is to use other people’s corruption. He discovers the mayor’s up to no good, so he decides to use that to his own ends. He discovers theatre and opera and actors have sway in the society, so “I’ll have a bit of that. I’ll learn to act and talk the way they do.” The whole point of the play was to mirror the way that Arturo reaches the top with what Hitler did in Germany and how fascism and Nazism and extreme right-wing behaviour thrive in times of corruption and chaos.
My name is Keith Baxter, and I’m playing-
Can hold it there please, Laura?
the actor who is a decrepit.
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- Okay, if you can hold that. If you can hold that there. Okay, thanks. And then it goes on to the actor who was the actor who taught Hitler, you know, how to do some mannerisms and theatrical gestures and voice, et cetera, which is one of the great scenes in the play of “Arturo Ui” Brecht takes. What I like is that he says Arturo Ui uses the corruption already there to his own advantage. So, Brecht understood Hitler the opportunist as a leader, not only the, you know, the fanatical ideologue, but the opportunist sees any moment, turn anything from disadvantage to advantage. You know, as we saw in the trial scene about the film on Hitler of the Robert Carlyle version, turning disadvantage to advantage; opportunist all the time. Okay, if we can go on to the next one, please. And this shows just a fun one of Henry Goodman, he’s Jewish South African originally, and it’s just him getting ready, just backstage fun, if you like, to see what the actor will go through to get ready and to see him transforming physically to becoming the actor, the character. Is it coming, Lauren? Thanks so much. What I love about it, in a couple of minutes, you see the actors work, on how Henry Goodman, transforming himself as he’s doing on stage through the satire of Brecht, and making himself into this iconic public image of the leader, if you like.
Okay. Setting of the fascist leader. All right, if we can go onto the next one please. Just to note, always it’s the light, with Brecht and Weill, it’s the light music, and yet the content is dark. That’s a very powerful combination in theatre. You know, one of Brecht’s great phrases from one of his plays was, “Well, why rob a bank, if you can own it?” You get constantly the twist in the play to make us think perhaps in a slightly different way. Okay, if we can play the next one. And this is Lotte Lenya in the original New York version in English of Pirate Jenny, “Threepenny Opera,” obviously once she and Weill had immigrated to America.
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Jenny? Jenny, we’ve been talking about our families. You never told us about your family.
Family? I never had a family. All I ever had was a dream.
♪ Gentlemen can watch while I’m scrubbin’ the floors ♪ ♪ And I’m scrubbin’ the floors while you’re gawkin’ ♪ ♪ And maybe once you tip me, and it makes you feel swell ♪ ♪ On a ratty waterfront in a ratty old hotel ♪ ♪ And you never guess to who you are talkin’ ♪ ♪ You never guess to who you are talkin’ ♪ ♪ Suddenly one night there’s a scream in the night ♪ ♪ And you yell, what the hell could that I’ve been ♪ ♪ And you see me kind of grinning while I’m scrubbin’ ♪ ♪ And you say, what the hell has she got to grin ♪ ♪ And a ship ♪ ♪ A black freighter ♪ ♪ With a skull on its masthead ♪ ♪ Will be coming in ♪ ♪ You gentlemen can say, hey girl, finish the floors ♪ ♪ Get upstairs, make the beds, earn your keep here ♪ ♪ You’ll toss me your tips and look out at the ships ♪ ♪ But I’m countin’ your heads while I make up the beds ♪ ♪ ‘Cause there’s nobody going to sleep here tonight ♪ ♪ None of you will sleep here ♪ ♪ Then that night there’s a bang in the night ♪ ♪ And you yell, who’s that kicking up a row ♪ ♪ And you see me kind of starin’ out the window ♪ ♪ And you say, what’s she got to stare at now ♪ ♪ And the ship, the black freighter ♪ ♪ Turns around in the harbour ♪ ♪ Shootin’ guns from the bow ♪ ♪ Then you gentleman can wipe out that ♪ ♪ laugh from your face ♪ ♪ Every building in town is a flat one ♪ ♪ Your whole stinkin’ place will be down to the ground ♪ ♪ Only this cheap hotel standin’ up safe and sound ♪ ♪ And you yell, why the hell spare that one ♪ ♪ And you yell ♪
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- Okay, perhaps we can hold it there, Lauren. ♪ All the night through with the noise ♪ Okay, if we can hold it there, please. Okay, what I get from her performance, and she, in 1956, she won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny on the off-Broadway. And it played for 2,707 performances, which is extraordinary. And what I love is she gets, and I’m going to go back to one of the phrases I love from James Dean, you know, at the age of 21, when he said, “All my acting walks through the razor’s edge between defiance and vulnerability,” and in her performing, we get that defiance and the vulnerability, but we get the tough working class cleaning lady who’s cleaning, scrubbing the floors, doing the washing, and so on. But there’s a toughness, a determination, and a tenacity. And I don’t think it’s just a cliche of the working class worker, there’s something much deeper in it. And that’s what I’m trying to say with the connection between the historical, the social type of the cleaner lady together with this sense of “I’m going to endure, and I’m going to succeed, and I’m going to overcome adversity even though I’m born into these terrible circumstances.” Human nature, in an historical way, in an historical context, you know, would be the theory anyway, inside their performance. Right, this is a very interesting one from Nina Simone. If we can do the next one, doing the same song, and Nina Simone in concert in Carnegie Hall, giving it a very Black American Southern context. Same washerwoman, cleaning woman character.
SONG BEGINS
♪ You people can watch while I’m scrubbin’ these floors ♪ ♪ And I’m scrubbin’ the floors while you’re gawking ♪ ♪ Maybe once you tip me and it makes you feel swell ♪ ♪ In this crummy southern town ♪ ♪ In this crummy old hotel ♪ ♪ But you’ll never guess to who you’re talkin’ ♪ ♪ No, you couldn’t ever guess to who you’re talking ♪ ♪ Then one night there’s a scream in the night ♪ ♪ And you wonder, who could that have been ♪ ♪ And you see me kind of grinin’ while I’m scrubbing ♪ ♪ And you say, what’s she got to grin ♪ ♪ I’ll tell you ♪ ♪ There’s a ship ♪ ♪ The black freighter ♪ ♪ With a skull on its masthead will be coming in ♪ ♪ You gentlemen can say, hey gal, finish them floors ♪ ♪ Get upstairs, what’s wrong with you, earn your keep here ♪ ♪ And you toss me your tips and look out to the ships ♪ ♪ But I’m counting your heads as I’m making the beds ♪ ♪ ‘Cause there’s nobody going to sleep here tonight ♪ ♪ Nobody’s going to sleep here, honey ♪ ♪ Nobody ♪ ♪ Nobody ♪ ♪ Then one night there’s a scream in the night ♪ ♪ And you say ♪
SONG ENDS
Okay, thanks. Hold it there, please. Okay, thanks. So, and I think what we get here, I mean, first of all, there’s Weill’s music, which has got some of the American jazz, riffs, and he’s trying to be uplifting. He’s trying to give the So we get some of these little riffs, which are American jazz influence, not only from what he took from the German and the cabaret music, you know, from his earlier times, Kurt Weill. And the extraordinary ability for these songs to transcend time and historical place. Nina Simone can do it with a Southern Black American context of the 50s or even the early 60s. Lotte Lenya, can do it, you know, with the sense of European washer woman working, you know, in those times in Germany, and many others, of course, everywhere. And that’s what I think Weill, by incorporating the American riffs into the jazz into his music and composition and working with, you know, Hammerstein, Gershwin and some of the others, you know, and embracing it, I think he takes a leap far further than many of the others who came as the emigrates to America. Okay. In fact, there’s one wonderful phrase that, you know, when he really parted with Brecht and started to work with Maxwell Anderson and others, he’s reported to have said to Brecht, “You want me to compose a music to The Communist Manifesto? Forget it.” I’m paraphrasing, of course, but one of their huge falling out was around that, you know, “I’m not going to compose to just, you know, political didactic words.” Okay, the next one, please, Lauren. This is the great Bobby Darin. I think gives the ultimate of “Mack the Knife.”
CLIP BEGINS
♪ Oh the shark, babe ♪ ♪ Has such teeth, dear ♪ ♪ And it shows them pearly white ♪ ♪ Just a jack knife ♪ ♪ Has old MacHeath, babe ♪ ♪ And it keeps it out of sight ♪ ♪ You know when that shark bites ♪ ♪ With its teeth, babe ♪ ♪ Scarlet billows start to spread ♪ ♪ Fancy gloves though ♪ ♪ Wears old MacHeath, babe ♪ ♪ So there’s never, never a trace of red ♪ ♪ Now, on the sidewalk, a-huh, huh ♪ ♪ Ooh, sunny morning, a-huh ♪ ♪ Lies a body ♪ ♪ Just a-oozing life, eek ♪ ♪ And someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner ♪ ♪ Could that someone be Mack the knife ♪ ♪ There’s a tugboat, huh, huh, a-huh ♪ ♪ Down by the river, don’t you know ♪ ♪ Where a cement bag just droopin’ on down ♪ ♪ Oh, that cement is just ♪ ♪ It’s there for the weight, dear ♪ ♪ Five’ll get ya 10 ol’ Macky’s back in town ♪ ♪ Now, did you hear about Louie Miller ♪ ♪ He disappeared, babe ♪ ♪ After drawin’ out ♪ ♪ All his hard earned cash ♪ ♪ And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor ♪ ♪ Could it be our boy’s done somethin’ rash ♪ ♪ Ah, Jenny Diver, ho, ho ♪ ♪ Yeah, Suky Tawdry ♪ ♪ Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya ♪ ♪ And ol’ Lucy Brown ♪ ♪ Oh, the line forms ♪ ♪ On the right, babe ♪ ♪ Now that Macky’s back in town ♪ ♪ I said Jenny Diver ♪ ♪ Whoa, Suky Tawdry ♪ ♪ Look out to Miss Lotte Lenya ♪ ♪ And ol’ Lucy Brown ♪ ♪ Yes, that line forms ♪ ♪ On the right, babe ♪ ♪ Now that Macky’s ♪ ♪ Back in town ♪ ♪ Look out ol’ Macky is back ♪
CLIP ENDS
- Thanks, Lauren. I think also what for me Darin brings is if you listen very carefully at end the phrase, with how he plays the end of the word, end of the phrase, how he sings it, it’s always like it’s a bit of a drop, and then he waits a split second and then picks it up again, you know. For me, as Dylan said about Frank Sinatra, just listen to the voice. Listen to the voice. And for me that’s the same with Bobby Darin, just listen, the voice is the voice. And how he manages to find these very subtle changes at the end of a riff or at the end of a phrase, beginning of the next word. And of course, the fantastic music of Kurt Weill. You know, and I think this for me is one of his great achievements, and the fact that it’s being taken up globally everywhere, this song in particular, together with “Pirate Jenny.” If we could perhaps play lastly, a little bit of Louis Armstrong and Lotte Lenya in the last one, please.
CLIP BEGINS
[Presenter] Our story last week on Louis Armstrong prompted listener Art Hilgert to send us this recording, the only record Louis Armstrong ever made with Lotte Lenya. Renowned cabaret singer was married to Kurt Weill, composer of the “Threepenny Opera,” she told Mr. Armstrong her husband had been influenced by some of Louis’s recordings. Can you hear that? ♪ Oh, the shark has pretty teeth ♪
Hear it right here. ♪ Dear ♪ ♪ And he shows them pearl white ♪ ♪ Just a jack knife has MacHeath, dear ♪ ♪ And he keeps it out of sight ♪ ♪ When the shark bites so with his teeth, dear ♪ ♪ Scarlet billows start to spread ♪ ♪ Fancy gloves, though, wears MacHeath, dear ♪ ♪ So there’s not a trace of red ♪ ♪ Oh, on the sidewalk Sunday morning ♪ ♪ Lies a body oozin’ life ♪ ♪ Someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner ♪ ♪ Is that someone Mack the Knife ♪ ♪ Yeah, from a tugboat by the river, ba, ba ♪ ♪ A cement bag’s droopin’ down ♪ ♪ Mm, the cement’s just for the weight, dear ♪ ♪ Bet you Macky’s ♪
That’s good vibe. ♪ Back in town ♪ ♪ Louie Miller disappeared, dear ♪ ♪ After drawin’ out his cash ♪ ♪ And MacHeath spends like a sailor ♪ ♪ Did our boy do something rash ♪ ♪ Looky here, Suky Tawdry ♪ ♪ Jenny Diver ♪ ♪ I say, Lotte Lenya ♪ ♪ Sweet Lucy Brown ♪ ♪ Oh, the line forms on the right, dear ♪ ♪ Now that Macky’s back in town ♪
[Presenter] Louis Armstrong and Lotte Lenya recorded in September 28th, 1955.
CLIP ENDS
- Thanks, Lauren. Thanks, if we can hold there. Just to bring it all together, I’m going to leave out the Judy Garland song from “Lost in the Stars,” which Kurt Weill wrote together with Maxwell Anderson based on Alan Paton’s novel. You know, anybody can have a look, or I can send it to anyone, with pleasure. What’s extraordinary to me is the range that Weill, arriving and then expanding in New York to incorporate so many other influences. And not easy at all, you know, I mean, these are just a few snapshots, but incorporate, you know, from jazz, the roots of jazz to other American, to musical theatre of Hammerstein and others happening in New York City, et cetera, together with his own past, together with his Jewishness, you know, fleeing Nazi Germany. You know, a whole world happening and fast assimilation, we’re not going to go into the assimilation debate of Jews, but assimilating the music and in order to produce something, for me, quite magical. Brecht contributing in his own way. But Brecht, in a way, is still trying to use what he’s developed much more in Germany, the satire, the cabaret, all those approaches, trying to show the difference between, you know, history, and not determined by deity, kings, gods, whatever; human history and if we can change, a more thinking theatre. But what for me, ultimately, is the magnificence of the jazz and the music.
Without that, I don’t how powerful these plays would remain. And not only do I have a personal absolute love for jazz, love it so much, but it’s the ability for jazz to find a riff, to find an uplifting moment in the times of darkest, quiet despair or loud despair. And I think that’s what jazz really does. And for him to have incorporated it, Weill, given where he’s coming from and moving all the way in such turbulent times, I think is an extraordinary achievement of an artist. Okay, so let’s hold it there. And also, you know, a bit of light in the darkness. Thanks very much, everybody. And if you want, we can do questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: From Robert, “My father, an immigrant from Russia, prior to 1910 was in the trenches of World War I, always referred to Europe as a continent of misery. Are we repeating his observation?”
A: Yeah. Well, there have been many analogies, as we all know, made to, you know, the 30s the Spanish Civil War, of course, and what’s happening obviously with Ukraine and Russia. I think there are perhaps some similarities. I don’t think there are, you know, I would hesitate to say there are too many, but there are certainly some. But there is overall, I think the most frightening thing for me, aside from nuclear war threat, which is obviously the biggest terror of all, and aside from the horror happening, what we see, you know, with civilians, for me, the terror really is how authoritarianism is taking root in democracies. And I know there’s an extraordinary moment where the democracies are standing up, you know, to a certain degree, to the fascism. But how long, how they will last? If a NATO country was attacked, would Britain really send the 18-year old kids from Sunderland, from Liverpool, from Grimsby, from the small towns to fight in Poland? I’m not sure. Estonia, Latvia? I don’t know. I just raised that as a response to your question.
Betty, “I recently read that Brecht and Thomas Mann, who were both in LA at the same time, hated each other. At least, it was animosity. Yeah, I don’t know too much of the detail. I don’t think Brecht was the greatest friend. I think Brecht, I mean, he used Elizabeth Hoffman, Helena Wiegel, and others to help him with his stories. I think, partly, used Weill, you know, for the music and so on. I don’t think Brecht was beyond being opportunist himself, extremely, in using many others, you know, for his career and success.
Francine, "Brecht’s poem is a current. If Trump was more sophisticated, he would realise he was paraphrasing "The Solution,” not understand the irony.“ Absolutely. You know, I think irony for these people, and of course, irony for Jews is, you know, at the top of the humour tree, without a doubt. And irony in theatre is so powerful. When Hamlet dies at the end of Act 5, scene with Claudius, and his mother dies, but he kills the bad king, and he rises to the occasion and becomes a man, coming of age story. So the irony at the moment of death in moment of he rises in the audience’s imagination to the top of the tree. I think I’ve mentioned it before. So you know, it’s again, the irony of Kafka’s Jewish wit. You know, you’re going to kill the person, but you’re going to look up, you know, you get the meaning.
Q: Judy, "Was the soliloquy the heir of the Greek chorus?”
A: I think what’s really interesting. I think that yes, I think to a degree Shakespeare, consciously or not, uses the soliloquy, which could be part of an influence of the Greek chorus. I can’t say for sure because there’s no evidence, written evidence, but you know, I think that the soliloquy is the narrator, is the message, is the storyteller, and so on, who breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience, you know, and continues the story. And the soliloquy would do it. But Shakespeare also used the device of a messenger, “New! What news?!” and you know. Today we’d probably use the phone, the cell phone or the text message would be the same. The phone, the cell phone is the same effect as the Greek chorus in terms of message and narrating story developments.
Q: Joan, “Do you not see the danger of students using a swastika and Nazis?”
A: No, I think this was a group of high school students. They were studying this period in history. They wanted to do the play they had chose, and they were trying to find their own creativity in staging it. And these are their images, you know, with how they use the light, which I think is very creative. High school students trying to use technology in a contemporary way to understand a moment of history.
Merna, “Trump’s double standards, he finds corruptive and weak people to facilitate his rise, takes no responsibility.” Yep, and that’s what, you know, I don’t think you’ll ever find a dictator or an authoritarian who will ever accept blame. You know, they’re always going to project it out there and blame the other, whoever the other is. Never say, “I made a mistake, I was wrong,” or whatever.
Carol, “2018, "Arturo Ui” was in New York City.“ The Classic Stage. Oh, great. So timely, yeah, thank you. That play of Brecht, I think, "Arturo Ui,” because it speaks to any time of a change of democracy and authoritarianism and because it’s satire and comedy, it’s so resonant in so many cultures, done so often.
Francine, thank you. Judith, thank you for your kind comments.
Karen, “Bobby, Darin.” Yes, and if you have a look on Google, you’ll find the original, when Bobby Darin… He did it for, was it “The Johnny Carson Show?” Anyways, the very first time he does it, and you know, he suffered from a very severe heart condition, Bobby Darin, so his health was never good, but this was his signature song. He just, yeah, anyway, I’ve spoken about how he does the words.
Thanks, Lorna, for your comment to Marlene. Thank you.
Karen, “Louis Armstrong, the soul of jazz.” Yep. And to me, Charlie, oh there’s so many, I just love the jazz. Everything about it. Jillian, thanks.
Susan, thank you for your comment. Mara, Barbara, thanks.
Q: Maren, “Where did Weill learn English?”
A: Very interesting. Must have been in, when he got to America, in New York and elsewhere, ‘cause he certainly worked with Oscar Hammerstein, he worked with Maxwell Anderson, you know.
Okay, Anderson could speak some German. Ira Gershwin, he works with, you know.
Q: Miriam, “Do you think Zelensky’s theatre training has helped make him into the leader?”
A: Yes, without a doubt. Ronald Reagan another. But I think a theatre training for today’s leader, I think helps, goes a long way. One of the reasons why I think those scenes from “Arturo Ui” of the ham actor teaching the gangster, Al Capone, Arturo Ui image, how to perform on stage. And Brecht is writing this, you know, in the 40s, in New York, in America. So he’s prefiguring, you know, our celebrity-obsessed, social-media obsessed era that we live in. Maxine, thanks. Thank you, Margie.
Roberta, “Presentation on jazz.” I’d love to. I love jazz, rock, folk, and some classical, and indigenous musics from all over the world, Aborigines, everywhere.
Sam, “Lotte Lenya performing.” Yeah, I know, to find these little clips of Lotte Lenya is such a treasure because you get the feel of how they were doing it. So, through our imagination, we can recreate our sense of really living in those times. Not only performing, but living in those times when we see the Lotte Lenya’s and others doing it.
Merna, “Book burning isn’t dead, look at some of the US.” Okay. Right, I think that’s it. And thank you to everybody everywhere. Hope you have a good weekend. As spring comes, there’s always a crack where the light gets in.
Thanks so much. Take care.