'MAN' HUNT







Brecht's anarchic spirit turns up in lark at the A.R.K.











05/17/02







By David Cuthbert



Theater writer/The Times-Picayune











There's no happier experience for me than hauling my tired old keester off to some obscure theater space for a production that turns out to be so much more than expected.







Bertolt Brecht's "Man is Man" at the A.R.K. gets it right: the German-born playwright's timeless theme of military manipulation of the common man and his famous alienation effect, which calls attention to the fact that what you're watching is only theater so that your intellect -- and not your emotion -- is engaged. The play's theatricality and playful, anarchic spirit prevail throughout. It was a warm night and the A.R.K. has no air-conditioning, just fans, but it didn't matter. It was exhilarating.







This is Eric Bentley's 1962 adaptation of Brecht's 1926 piece in which he first tried his "epic theater" approach of social-political drama as episodic, ironic, populist entertainment. Ideas dominate here, and the message is put across in a coarsely comic, presentational style of sardonic song, mock jingoism and announcements telling the audience what is about to happen.







Using the framing device of a recruitment play for His Majesty's Imperial Indian Army, "Man is Man" tells the story of Galy Gay, a trusting, good-hearted young simpleton who goes off to buy a fish for dinner and is bamboozled into the Army, brainwashed into believing that he is someone else and ultimately becomes a "human fighting machine." After all, "one man is no man" and all men are interchangeable peas in the great militant pod, robbed of identity and individuality, succumbing to the siren song of relinquished selfhood.







Where to begin telling you of the rag-tag, squalid splendors of this strikingly strident evening?







The company is mostly young and totally committed to the dark, derisive daffiness at hand. Bracingly directed with mocking wit and bawdy brio by Daniel Kahn and Sarah Clifford, it features Kahn at the piano and accordion, playing his own Kurt Weill-Frederick Hollander-influenced score, with one actual Weill melody, "The Cannon Song" from "The Threepenny Opera," matched with a Brecht poem. Kahn provides not only songs but underscoring as well, and serves as our wild-eyed recruiter-emcee. His tatty, talented cabaret band includes Jessie Smith, an impassive-aggressive drummer; Anikka Lachman, perched atop the upright piano, on violin; ukulele player Sienna O'Bannion; and Michael Tuttle on bass, all doubling in small roles in the play.







Adam Haver is perfection as Galy Gay, the baby-faced boob turned blood-thirsty beast. Kevin Fricke barks, snarls and roars his way through the role of Sgt. Bloody Five, he of the gross appetites and outrageous costuming (a Union Jack eyepatch and increasingly outsized phallus). Claudia Baumgarten's pragmatic, whiskey wagoneer Widow Begbeck, who sells both booze and sex, is a precursor to some of Brecht's most famous characters: Pirate Jenny (from "The Threepenny Opera") and Mother Courage (from "Mother Courage and Her Children"). Bryan "Spitz"faden makes a merrily malevolent Baker, ringleader of the soldier-tricksters Shelly (played by lean, mean Arthur Fischer) and Mahoney (hearty Keith Massey). One would like to have seen more of Christopher Blum's antic Jeriah Jip, but then, he's the missing soldier Galy is pressed into impersonating.







Brother Clit's anguished Mrs. Gay, Joel Davis' tech design with concentration camp-type follow spot, and Lexi Kiel-Wernsen's thrift shop/Army surplus costuming add further layers of chaotic harmony to this invigorating staging.







Also included is Brecht's "The Elephant Calf," once part of the play but now done as a kangaroo-court coda, beginning with the announcement: "So that the dramatic art can have its full effect, you are requested to smoke to your heart's content. Our artists are the best in the world, the drinks are 100 percent, the chairs are comfortable, bets will be taken at the bar on how the plot comes out . . . Whoever can't immediately understand the plot needn't fret, it's incomprehensible . . ."







Dalt Wonk from Gambit Weekly review





Galy Gay (Adam Haver) hashes things out with the elephant (Brian Spitzfaden and Keith Massey) in Man Is Man. The reappearance of Bertolt Brecht on a local stage (in any incarnation other than the Three Penny Opera) is so rare as to be startling. Perhaps the wave of belligerent patriotism that arose like a tsunami in reaction to 9/11 has, through some arcane law of psycho-dynamics, called up a counter force of skeptical pacifism.



Man Is Man, currently on the boards in a spirited and engaging production at the A.R.K., dates from the mid 1920s. Brecht had not yet formally joined the Communist Party, but he was certainly well on his way to being "born again" in the Marxist faith.



The play is a fable. It pulses with the vigor and freedom that makes Brecht's theater so appealing. But it's a bizarre, confused fable -- infected, perhaps, with a virus of Weimar decadence.



The mood at the ragtag A.R.K. is perfect -- more perfect, I suspect, than any of Brecht's own productions in which his signature grittiness was generated in some very well-heeled, prestigious establishments. Off to one side of the stage, at an upright piano sits Daniel Kahn, in army khakis. Kahn, who wrote the music and co-directed the play (with Sarah Clifford), also acts as MC in the persona of Sgt. Solly Schmidt of His Majesty George the Second's India Corps. Sitting on and around the piano are assorted camp followers who make up the band. Kahn's music is appealing and evocative, as is the deliberately rinky-dink set with its scarlet curtain, bare light bulb and stretched sheet for projected titles.



Galy Gay (Adam Haver) is the hero of the tale. He is an innocuous riverfront porter in Kilkoa -- a man whose major virtue is that he has "very few vices." One day, he sets out to buy a fish for supper, leaving his wife (Brother Clit, according the playbill) heating up a pot of water to cook it in. Meanwhile, an army machine-gun unit (Michael Tuttle, Arthur Fisher, Christopher Blum, Brian Spitzfaden and Keith Massey) set about looting a native shrine, the Pagoda of the Crimson God (what pagodas are doing in India is unclear). They are repulsed, and as they flee, one of their number -- Jeriah Jip, by name -- leaves a large swatch of his hair behind on the pagoda gate. Jip, a drunkard, is deposited in a large basket and left there unconscious.



The commanding officer (an amusingly explosive Kevin Fricke) is a hell-for-leather sex maniac and sanguinary martinet given the sobriquet "Bloody Five" in honor of his most heroic exploit: the murder of five enemy prisoners. Bloody Five will wreak horrible retribution on the looters if he can find them, and he knows one of the looters must have a newly acquired bald spot.



The machine gunners meet Galy Gay and, realizing he is incapable of saying "no," bully him into taking the place of the missing Jeriah Jip. During the rest of the play, Galy Gay gradually becomes convinced he is the man he's been impersonating. Meanwhile, the enterprising widow Begbick (a radiant Claudia Baumgarten) and her daughters (Sienna, Jessie and Anikka Lachman) keep the troops entertained. There is a long episode about a fraudulent elephant (Brian Spitzfaden and Keith Massey in costume) and Bloody Five, in a fit of morbid self doubt, castrates himself.



What is one to make of it all? Well, one of the straw men that Brecht is obviously taking his agit-prop ax to is the idea of human nature. General concepts of this sort are anathema to a Marxist. Man is not Man -- he is what society makes him. In this case, a nice porter transmogrifies into an aggressive warrior. The trouble, for me, is that the transmogrification is so broadly portrayed as to be senseless, unless we are to take it that we are all Galy Gays, pursuing our own little goals, but so utterly lacking in inner direction that we can be molded at will into a contrary personality. Even if this is the point, the fable remains confusing. And the long, elaborate fictional transformation tells us precious little about the kinds of real transformations that endanger us.



In any case, it's not the message, but the massage that makes the evening work. Brecht's attitude to the theater was new and refreshing. It retains a brash, defiant joy. You don't have to understand the point of the show to enjoy the show. The mood is strong and distinctive; the music is buoyant; and the performances winning.



I can't say as much for a coda to the play called The Elephant Calf, which was like the Chinese water torture. Man Is Man is a rousing bit of Brechtiana. Enjoy it, applaud, then run for the exit.

WHAT: A hilarious double-feature spoofing four pop culture icons--Scooby Doo, The Blair Witch Project, Gilligan's Island, and Survivor! Imagine Ginger and Mary Ann scrapping for $1,000,000 and you've got the right idea... WHERE: The A.R.K., 511 Marigny Street, at the corner of Marigny and Decatur Streets, one block below Elysian Fields (click here for a map) WHEN: Every Friday and Saturday night at 8:00pm, from December 1 - 30, 2000 HOW MUCH: $12-$15 sliding scale (18 and over, please) WHO: Running With Scissors, of course... Starring: Jason Toups: Velma/Survivor Moderator Flynn De Marco: Shaggy/Professor Ashley Bradley: Daphne/Ginger Kim Collins: Gilligan Jim Jeske: Mr. Howell Dorian Rush: Mrs. Howell Veronica Oliver : Mary Ann and more...

Camille April 6 - 28, 2001 at 8:00pm The A. R. K., 511 Marigny Street (at the corner of Marigny and Decatur) Tickets: $12 - $15, sliding scale From April 6 - 28, Running With Scissors will entertain New Orleans' theatre lovers with Charles Ludlam's Camille! Taking the drama of Dumas' 1852 original and his own late-20th century camp sensibility, Ludlam created an hysterical, poignant, and completely original work of art that has had audiences rolling in the aisles for nearly 30 years. Camille tells the story of Marguerite Gautier, Lady of the Camellias--a hooker with a heart of gold. One day, Camille meets a dashing young man who offers to carry her away from the debauchery and frivolity of the Parisian demimonde. Smitten, she accepts his offer, but complications ensue, leading up to an ending that evokes laughter, tears, and standing ovations. Camille will play at 8:00pm every Friday and Saturday in April at the new A.R.K. Theatre, 511 Marigny Street, at the corner of Marigny and Decatur Streets, one block below Elysian Fields. Admission is $12- $15, sliding scale. The cast list includes: Baron de Varville / Duval Sr.: Jim Jeske Nanine: Bob Edes, Jr. Marguerite Gautier: Flynn De Marco Nichette Fondue: Veronica Oliver Olympe de Taverné: Allyson Garro Saint Gaudens: Kim Collins Prudence Duvernoy: Dorian Rush Armand Duval: Peter Callahan

Waiting For Godot