Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) Read Online Free
Author: Bertolt Brecht
to Switzerland. The machinations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (from May onwards) thus had less effect on his movements than is sometimes thought. Hanns Eisler was interrogated by one of their subcommittees that month and the FBI file on Brecht reopened, while Eisler’s brother Gerhart was on trial during much of the
Galileo
rehearsals; finally Brecht himself appeared before the committee a day or two before leaving for Switzerland in September. But these words did probably affect the fortunes of the New York production, which Hambleton had delayed (according to Higham) in order to add the ‘passion, excitement, colour’ which the critics had felt to be lacking. Further cuts were made there to give us the text as we now print it (see the appendix, p. 3 3 3 ff.), the odd facetious line was worked in; the cast was entirely new. Again however the reviews were bad, Brooks Atkinson in the
New York Times
dismissing the production as ‘stuffed with hokum’. ‘The New York press’, noted Brecht in Zurich,
seems to have missed exactly what laughton’s catholic friend missed in GALILEO : a scientist agonising under duress whom we can empathise with, well, galileo’s bad conscience is shown in right proportion in the play, but this is not nearly enough for the bourgeoisie; having come to power it wishes to see the higher spiritual movements of those whom it compels to act against their consciences displayed larger than life so as to embellish the overall picture of their world.
The run was a very short one – six performances, suggests the 1988 edition. Higham blames the difficulty of finding another theatre to which to transfer. But Laughton’s earlier biographer Kurt Singer gave a somewhat different interpretation, writing(with an exaggeration indicative of the temper of those times) that
The trouble lay in the political affiliations of the playwright. Berthold Brecht was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist. On the point of being deported from the United States for his Communist activities, he escaped and turned up again in East Germany, where be became the Soviet’s pet author, supervising the literary life of the Soviet-controlled zone and turning out odes to Stalin on the various state holidays. The musical score for the play on Galileo had been composed by Hanns Eisler, another convinced Communist who had composed many propaganda songs, including
The Comintern March
. Several actors in the cast turned out to be Communists too …
Whether or not this put Laughton himself off the play, as Singer suggests, Brecht continued to count on the actor’s collaboration in a proposed film version to be made in Italy. The producer who had initiated this scheme was Rod E. Geiger, who apparently had funds in that country as a result of his earnings on Rossellini’s
Open City
. Negotiations continued while Brecht was in Switzerland, and a scheme was worked out with the approval of Laughton and his agents by which the former would come to London for a production of the play around the end of 1948, after which work on the film would follow. Brecht and Reyher would write the script, which Geiger felt must give more emphasis to the relationship between Virginia and her fiance Ludovico. However, everything was conditional on Laughton’s involvement, and he blew hot and cold, his own nervousness of Communist associations being no doubt aggravated by the warnings of his agent. So it all fell through – possibly prompting Brecht to the satirical Obituary for Ch.L’ which he wrote around this time (
Poems 1913–1956
, p. 418):
Speak of the weather
Be thankful he’s dead
Who before he had spoken
Took back what he said.
At any rate this put paid for the moment to all further plans, since the play could hardly be staged by Brecht’s own company, the Berliner Ensemble, till they had a suitable actor and a revised German text. Brecht himself in Zurich had made a start and translated about half the Laughton text; he seems to
Galileo
rehearsals; finally Brecht himself appeared before the committee a day or two before leaving for Switzerland in September. But these words did probably affect the fortunes of the New York production, which Hambleton had delayed (according to Higham) in order to add the ‘passion, excitement, colour’ which the critics had felt to be lacking. Further cuts were made there to give us the text as we now print it (see the appendix, p. 3 3 3 ff.), the odd facetious line was worked in; the cast was entirely new. Again however the reviews were bad, Brooks Atkinson in the
New York Times
dismissing the production as ‘stuffed with hokum’. ‘The New York press’, noted Brecht in Zurich,
seems to have missed exactly what laughton’s catholic friend missed in GALILEO : a scientist agonising under duress whom we can empathise with, well, galileo’s bad conscience is shown in right proportion in the play, but this is not nearly enough for the bourgeoisie; having come to power it wishes to see the higher spiritual movements of those whom it compels to act against their consciences displayed larger than life so as to embellish the overall picture of their world.
The run was a very short one – six performances, suggests the 1988 edition. Higham blames the difficulty of finding another theatre to which to transfer. But Laughton’s earlier biographer Kurt Singer gave a somewhat different interpretation, writing(with an exaggeration indicative of the temper of those times) that
The trouble lay in the political affiliations of the playwright. Berthold Brecht was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist. On the point of being deported from the United States for his Communist activities, he escaped and turned up again in East Germany, where be became the Soviet’s pet author, supervising the literary life of the Soviet-controlled zone and turning out odes to Stalin on the various state holidays. The musical score for the play on Galileo had been composed by Hanns Eisler, another convinced Communist who had composed many propaganda songs, including
The Comintern March
. Several actors in the cast turned out to be Communists too …
Whether or not this put Laughton himself off the play, as Singer suggests, Brecht continued to count on the actor’s collaboration in a proposed film version to be made in Italy. The producer who had initiated this scheme was Rod E. Geiger, who apparently had funds in that country as a result of his earnings on Rossellini’s
Open City
. Negotiations continued while Brecht was in Switzerland, and a scheme was worked out with the approval of Laughton and his agents by which the former would come to London for a production of the play around the end of 1948, after which work on the film would follow. Brecht and Reyher would write the script, which Geiger felt must give more emphasis to the relationship between Virginia and her fiance Ludovico. However, everything was conditional on Laughton’s involvement, and he blew hot and cold, his own nervousness of Communist associations being no doubt aggravated by the warnings of his agent. So it all fell through – possibly prompting Brecht to the satirical Obituary for Ch.L’ which he wrote around this time (
Poems 1913–1956
, p. 418):
Speak of the weather
Be thankful he’s dead
Who before he had spoken
Took back what he said.
At any rate this put paid for the moment to all further plans, since the play could hardly be staged by Brecht’s own company, the Berliner Ensemble, till they had a suitable actor and a revised German text. Brecht himself in Zurich had made a start and translated about half the Laughton text; he seems to
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