Surface and Synjbol
The Emerald s weekly arts and entertainment supplement Thursday, April 14, 1977
‘Streetcar’provides solid show while...
By CHERYL RUDERI
0/ the Emerald
The demise of Blanche
DuBois is not a pretty sight
She hovers around people like
a translucent insect, trying to
sap a trace ot warmth in the
midst ot her own crumbling so
cial structure and a society
rampant with hypocritical mor
als She is a tragic victim ot
20th century neuroses and
western sexual values —
never hard and sufficient,
she admits I was soft, and
soft people have to shimmer
Tennessee Williams immor
tal A Streetcar Named Desire
opened at the Arena
Theatre last week, loosing
Blanche and Stanley Kowalski
on yet another audience
Though beginning to show the
signs of age in some of its
character traits — i e . are
homosexuals referred to as
degenerate anymore, are
promiscuous single women
run out of town and labeled un
touchable 7 — there is an
overall worth to the play that
spans the years Director Ed
ward C Chambers could have
done a trondy update of the
play and it might have worked
But leaving it back in the torrid
t-shirt starkness of 1947 New
Orleans was the saler move
_ r-nmo oy
Carol Baker portrays Blanche and Bill Geisslmger plays Stanley under Ed Chambers direction
The play has been sold out
and he does it well
As the focal character
Blanche. Carol Baker gives a
good performance in a most
demanding role She is. how
ever inches away from grasp
ing the character s essence,
being overly shrill and wispy,
which detracts from the poten
tial seductiveness of Blanche
Baker's Blanche is unbearably
high-strung from the start, leav
ing little room for progression
The second act is her forte,
however; she sinks brilliantly
She also has conquered the
southern belle accent and one
of her most favorable scenes,
in which she matter-of-factly
likens Stanley to an ape, is
beautifully executed.
In the role of the brutish
Kowalski, Bill Geisslinger is
suitably stubborn His mocking
acidity does go beyond the
character, though Overall his
performance in a role that un
justly begs companson to the
rendition by a famous movie
actor is solid and controlled.
In their back-up roles as
Stella and Mitch, Rebecca
Webb and Herbert Keipella are
both noticeably stiff Webb
teeters between accents,
never quite letting the charac
ter emerge. Keipella lets
Mitch's inherent slowness
come out but when his time
comes to renounce Blanche
the appropriate anger is
somewhat lacking.
Williams play is not an easy
one to tackle for an amateur
group. In an intimate little thea
ter these performers have
done a laudatory, solid, though
non-innovative job Streetcar
continues through this
weekend: it is sold out but can
cellations may occur, so come
early to get on the waiting list
Brecht’s relevant reminder
prepares in the wings
By DAN WEBSTER
Ot the Emerald
The stage is bare, except lor the wagon-like structure
that seems much larger in the coniines ol the small stage
area than it really is The 15 actors rush headlong from
one end ol Ihe playing area to the other, occasionally
bumping into one another, often laughing Then, all at
once, the action stops and the actors freeze in a set place,
exactly where they are supposed to. and someone begins
to srno
Cut' he toII. bearded director yells. I want the
druiiiiniiig during that transition to seem more like rifle
lire Can you do that?," he asks the musicians
Minutes later, as the action resumes, he sits back,
satisfied, no longer pulling so anxiously on his battered
pipe
Where was I, he asks Oh yes. I was talking about
the play.
"I have a lot ol respect for the work, he says, "maybe
even too much respect lor it But I look at the fact that this
is perhaps the best play by the Individual that I consider to
be the best playwright overall of the 20th century, cer
tainly the greatest figure in Ihe theatre of the last 50
years
The play being discussed is the University Theatre's
spring production ol Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and
Her Children The director is Lowell Fiet, an assistant
professor in the theatre department and a theatre scholar
who is no stranger to the plays and theories of Brecht
During the three years that he taught in the theatre de
partment of Michigan State University before coming to
Oregon, Fiet directed a number of Brecht s short works
along with a major production of Brecht on Brecht
His admiration for the plays of the German playwright
who died in 1956 is not based solely upon their inherent
aesthetic quality, but upon their political nature as well.
Brecht demonstrated, not only through his plays but
through his theories and through his very accomplished
practice as a director-producer as well, that theatre can
change; it can adapt to the time in which we live instead of
being a more or less backward art, and it can anticipate
certain kinds of actions, certain kinds of cultural cnses.
he says That is what I am trying to preserve overall in
this production.
By anticipating what societal crisis will next occur,
Brecht felt that the public, especially the theatre-going
public, could be educated into doing what is needed in
order to avoid the problem. In writing Mother Courage in
1939, barely pre-dating World War II. Brecht tried to illus
trate the fact that everyone is responsible for war and its
tragedies, although it is usually only the small fry that
bear the full brunt of the suffering
Mother Courage has been variously interpreted, in
some cases as an anti-war play, in others as a pacifist
work, f- let says "I'm not sure it's really either one of
these, although it may have statements that would tend
toward those interpretations
One thing for sure, he says "it is a war play, a play
about individuals in the process of war in one form or
another "
And it is this situation, individuals caught up in war,
that for Fiet, parallels closely what went on in the United
States during its war in Vietnam
"I see (he theme of the play being basically one of
contrast between words and actions, he says On the
surface, through her words. Mother Courage protests
against the war. She frequently spouts comments about
how terrible it is to live in a war, but her actions are
something very different Everything she does, as op
posed to everything she says, is geared toward a position
of supporting this war because it means profits for her.
During the 1960's, Fiet feels, a similar situation ex
isted in. of all places, the college campuses
The Vietnam war has a somewhat more ironic point
of view, as I see it. he says It comes down basically to
the fact that war does provide an economic boom
As the war progressed, he says, we started receiv
ing more and more goods from Asian countnes as evi
denced in Japanese cars, radios, all sorts of technological
gadgets all of which seemed to be stimulated by the war
in Vietnam. In fact, the economy itself gave nse to the
class of people who ultimately protested the most against
the war and that is the college student of the 1960's
This led to a complicated tangle whereby the "per
sons who protested against the war were at the same time
benefitting by it through living in an economy that was
experiencing a boom period, being able to earn more
money once they hit the |ob market, purchase more mat
enals that were, in one way or another, related to the war
effort.
So the play presents a kind of analysis of that situa
tion. Fiet says. And it just demonstrates that, in a sense,
although people did protest against the war, although I
protested against the war, I continued to grow
fat because of the war"
It is precisely because of this, because all of us who
lived through the 1960 s are no different from Anna Fierl
ing. Mother Courage, that Fiet feels it is necessary now,
more than ever, to do the play
The major reason I think the play should be done in
this country, at this time, he says, “is because we are in
an immediate post-war period and our tendency has been
in all the media, in nearly all aspects of national life, to
simply put the war behind us: to heal the wounds of
Vietnam and to get on to the business of running the
country I see it all as simply a myopic process of forget
ting We re not trying to heal the wounds of Vietnam
We re trying to forget all about it."
Mother Courage and Her Children, a play by Bertolt
Brecht, will be performed in Villard Hall s Pocket Theatre
on April 22. 23, 27-30 and May 4-7 Tickets are $1 75 for
University of Oregon students, S3 50 for the general pub
lic. Ticket information can be obtained by calling the
Robinson Theatre Box office at 686-4191.