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In Dark Times: Poetry and Songs of Bertolt Brecht 1929 – 1947: Daniel Evans (tenor),  Jenny Galloway (actor), Christopher Kelham (actor), Simon Haram (saxophone), Sam Walton (percussion), Dominic Muldowney (piano),  Kings Place, Hall One, London, 22.1.2009 (BBr)


Politisches Kabarett is a curious animal peculiar to the German speaking countries and almost untranslatable into other cultures. The spelling is important – two t’s in Kabarett separates it from cabaret and the difference is significant. Cabaret is an entertainment with songs and sketches, light hearted and inconsequential, Kabarett is heavier, darker, concerned with matters of the moment in a satirical, sometimes grotesque, manner. Frank Wedekind was an early Kabarettist, singing songs accompanying himself on a guitar – Brecht was later to do the same thing – and the tradition remains to this day. In the early 1980s I attended, in West Berlin, a Kabarett called Ka–De–We (Kabarett des Westens), the name lampooning the large department store in the city also known by the same name but standing for Kaufhaus des Westens. An elderly couple sitting next to me told me that this was exactly how Politiches Kabarett had been before the war – and they were lapping it up. At one point, in the midst of the, sometimes insane, happenings on stage, we found one man in military uniform, sitting alone, talking with his girlfriend on the telephone. She was obviously giving him a hard time and he answered her, “Yes, my darling, I understand what you are saying but Poland is not a banana republic! Have you ever seen a banana in Poland?” The character was General Jaruzelski, then Prime Minister of Poland, and this brief episode tells all you need to know about Politiches Kabarett.

In Britain the nearest we have come to this is in two television programmes – That Was the Week That Was (affectionately known as TW3) and, more recently, Spitting Image, where the satire was so barbed that you could have cut yourself on it -  and the stage show which launched the careers of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller – Beyond the Fringe. As proof that the style is incomprehensible to many in this country, when, in 1984, the National Theatre in London staged Brecht’s play Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg (The Good Soldier Schweik in the Second World War), which is based entirely on the concept of Politisches Kabarett, it was a disaster, and the biting and satirical humour was entirely lost.

This show wasn’t Politisches Kabarett in the real sense, it was a Brecht Abend, but Brecht’s words are full of the things which make Politsches Kabarett what it is, and two actors, a singer and small instrumental group gave an evening of words by Brecht complimented by musical settings by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Dominic Muldowney, all of which are political in their stance – sometimes sexual politics, sometimes governmental.

The works were well chosen, and the performances were of exceptional standard. Christopher Kelham gave Brecht’s Das Lied vom SA-Mann (Ballade of the S A Man) with an awe which heightened the message of utter futility:

They told me which enemy to shoot at
So I took their gun and aimed
And, when I had shot, saw my brother
Was the enemy they had named.

So now my brother is dying
By my own hand he fell
Yet I know that if he’s defeated
I shall be lost as well.

There were the poems which might have spoken of easier times but didn’t:

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
 
I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
 
In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure.

And we had the crux of the matter – which delivered a real kick to the groin:

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!

I hope that these few examples give some impression of the strength of the show and they were delivered in such a way that there was a real feeling of what I have always assumed to be the kind of alienation Brecht sought for in performances of his work.

The songs were very well done, mainly by Daniel Evans, who had to wrap his tonsils round some angular lines in Muldowney’s settings of words from Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui) – an highly satirical allegory of the rise of Hitler. Musically, the highlight of the show were Jenny Galloway’s interpretations of three of the greatest of Brecht settings – one by Weill and two by Eisler: Weill’s Surabaya Johnny, with its famous refrain: Nimm doch die Pfeife aus dem Maul, du Hund! suffered, as ever, from translation of that single line, for it is really untranslatable when it comes to getting the real feeling of the meaning, surely, ' Take that pipe out of yer gob, yer bastard!' is better than the rather homely, but correct translation: 'Take that pipe out of your mouth, you dog!'

But Eisler’s Ballade von der Judenhure Marie Saunders (Ballade of Marie Saunders, the Jew’s Whore) and especially Das Lied einer deutschen Mutter (Song of the German Mother), where she sings of her regret at having encouraged her son's Nazi activities, packed a powerful punch:

My son, I gave you the jackboots
And the brownshirt came from me,
But had I known then what I now know,
I’d have hanged myself from a tree.

I saw you wearing your brown shirt.
I should have protested aloud.
For I did not know what I now know:
It was your burial shroud.

The audience sat in stunned silence.

This was powerful stuff and Di Trevis, who directed, is to be praised for her insight into the mind, and work, of one of the greatest poets of the 20^th century. A small audience went into the cold, wet, London night, feeling more than a little humbled and shamefaced at what we had experienced.

One small point. This was my first visit to Kings Place and what a lovely venue it is, smelling of freshly cut wood and looking like a real place for enjoying music and theatre. However, as I sat in the sixth row, I was conscious that the voices of the actors, as they spoke, were echoing behind me, and, in essence, I heard the performance twice!! This strange acoustic phenomenon wasn’t present when music was being performed.

Bob Briggs

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