Epic Theatre... and Hitler Dancing

The thing about Brecht is that he was a man on a mission. Two missions, at least - as far as I can tell.

His primary mission was, originally, to shake up theatre. He wanted to take it out of it's fusty, late 19th/early 20th century 3-Act-Drawing-Room structure and make it magical. No longer would a play be penned in by some antiquated "form"! No longer would a playwright be required to use such antediluvian concepts as "beginning", "middle" and "end"! No longer would it be some academic exercise for the elite, but it would become fun - like sport! Throw open the doors and let anything be possible!

Quite admirable, really, and modern theatre owes so much to Brecht and his contemporaries that it's impossible to measure is influence.

His second mission came later but became equally as important, to him, as his first: to use theatre to "show the way". That "way" was, of course, Marxism. Brecht was one of the Bourgeoisie converts to Marxism who thought it was their duty to be the "voice" of the Proletariats until they could rise up and speak for themselves. Not that he really tried to speak for the Proletariat, but rather he wanted to be a beacon for the cause.

No longer was it enough for a play to be "free" from the constraints of the theatre of the past - it had to be a clarion call to the audience, teaching them how dire the world is, so that they would feel the need to change it.

"The word we know is deeply flawed - what are you going to do about it?" That was the drive of his plays in a world faced with the double threat of capitalism and fascism...

... which brings me to Hitler dancing.

I've been researching Brecht for an assignment (the first real literature assignment I've done for many long years), and I borrowed a book compiling his journals for the years between 1934 and 1950.

As I was looking for his comments on Der Gute Mensch von Setzuan, I stumbled across some pictures of what I first thought was a man dressed as Hitler on a film set.

Turns out these were actually stills from a newsreel featuring the man himself - dancing.

Hitler had just been given the news that France had capitulated, and he was so happy he danced a little jig.

Brecht had obviously clipped these pictures and some associated text out of a newspaper or magazine that had printed them, so they were included in his diary and therefore reprinted in this book.

I have to admit that I don't really watch any of the 350,567 documentaries on Hitler that seem to fill the viewing schedule on SBS of a Friday night, but I wonder how many of them show Hitler dancing. Most of the footage I have seen just seems to focus on him pointing a lot and spitting as he talks.

It should probably be noted that Brecht didn't particularly like Hitler. Nor did he like what Hitler was talking the German people into doing. He was so keen on Communism saving Germany from Fascism that he never quite noticed it tipped into Totalitarianism.

Or, at least, he tried not to. His diaries showed that he was reasonably aware that the new order of things wasn't quite right, but he had faith that it could be fixed if everyone just stuck at it.

I wonder what he would make of this new world, where most people remember Communism as a failed experiment that caused more harm than good? The Socialism he (and others like him) advocated was not the same Socialism that caused so much damage to Eastern Europe. The philosophy they dreamed of was hijacked and converted into something else. Would he still be trying to change the world? Would he still be using theatre to do it?

A Prince of Denmark

When I picked up the DVD for the RSC's 2009 production of Hamlet, my first thought was: "David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius? This should rock!"

Sometime later I thought: "Wait a minute, one of those two has already done this..."

It turns out I was right - Patrick Steward played Claudius opposite Derek Jacobi's Hamlet in the BBC film version back in 1980. I had largely blocked that from my memory, due to the fact that it was extremely boring.

Maybe it was the video quality of the tape I watched in high school, but it seemed too dark and muted to be able to really understand what was happening on screen half the time, and the actors were all so... "actorly" that it was hard to actually engage with the drive of the story. Plus, as a teenager, I couldn't quite forgive or accept the fact that Jacobi was clearly around the same age (maybe older) than the actors playing his "parents".

I get that Hamlet is the ultimate "actor's role", and everyone who has every played him wants to be imortalised as one of the definitive Hamlets. I realise that's why it is so tempting for an actor who played Hamlet on stage in his 30s to have a crack at the role on screen twenty years later... but it's just not good. Hamlet is a young man's role, and needs youthful engergy rather than mature gravitas.

This can be a bit odd, in the grand scheme of things, because I felt Branagh was too old for the role when he filmed it at the age of 36, but Tennant seemed to carry off the youthfulness much better, even though he was 38. Olivier was 37, and seemed more "wet" than "youthful", and Gibson was 34 but looked like he was trying to hard to act young and reckless. Branagh didn't really try to act youthful, which is guess is better than trying and failing.

Jacobi, though, was just too old. He should have let someone else play the role on screen. Same with Ethan Hawke. Not because he was too old for the role (at 29 he was the perfect age), but because he was terrible.

I thought the Hawke film would have been worth watching just to see Julia Styles in the role of Ophelia. She wasn't half bad, but the rest of the film was rubbish. It was really only interesting for the fencing scene on the rooftop. Apart from that, it just gave you the opportunity to note that Ethan Hawke belongs with Keanu Reeves in the catagory of "actors who should never be allowed to perform Shakespeare again".

There were, oddly, a few similarities between the Hawke version, which I didn't like at all, and the Tennant version, which I quite enjoyed. Both shifted the play out of it's original historical setting to something more "nowish" - which allowed Hamlet to dress like a modern slob at points. The way both Hamlets used hand-held cameras was also a similarity. Another was the way some scenes just didn't fit at all in this new setting.

The fencing scenes were strangely disjointed in both films because of the modernisation. In a historical context it makes perfect sense for the young men to all be involved in sword sports. It would have been a fairly common thing for men of their station to do. But when everything has been moved up to the 21st Century, fencing becomes more of a specialty activity and it's oddly surprising to have them suddenly put on white jackets and start waving swords around.

I felt as if it was a bit of a deus ex machina moment in both films. "Oh, we need to stab people with poison things now so... tada! They fence! Isn't that neat?"

I don't know why, but I would have preferred to see the fencing gear earlier in the piece. Someone should have been playing with a sword, or practising some moves, or polishing their fencing trophies... anything. It just needed some forshadowing in the modernised version to make it seem less contrived.

Mind you, it's been so long since I saw the Hawke version that I can't say for certain they didn't do this. I just remember feeling the scene was so out of place in a modernisation that it should have been replaced with some other activity - a game of pool or something.

I did enjoy Tennant's portrayal of Hamlet, - he was the first actor I've seen who made me understand that Hamlet was actually sad (grieving the loss of someone he loved very much) and not just depressed - but I also felt the film was lacking something. I can't put my finger on it.

Maybe I've just seen too many version of Hamlet. They all have different strengths and weaknesses and you will never find one that hits every mark for every viewer.

Wonder who'll be in the next one?