The Marxists — always exciting, stimulating

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 19

The Marxists — always exciting, stimulating

ELRIC HOOPER, the artistic director at the Court Theatre, has returned to Christchurch after a six-month leave to study theatre in Europe and the United States. During his travels he wrote a series of articles for “The Press” on his impressions of the theatre in Sydney, Athens, Rome and London. In the final two articles he writes on France today, and New York and San Francisco tomorrow.

I thought the bus driver had misunderstood me. Perhaps my French was not as good as I thought. What was he doing putting me down in the middle of a forest? I had asked quite clearly, I thought, for the “Cartoucherie” and had expected to be dropped off in the middle of some seedy outer suburb of Paris. But here I was, in the middle of the forest of Vincennes on a glorious spring afternoon supposedly going to the theatre. Even if this was a wild goose chase, it had been worth it already for I was standing in the middle of a painting by Monet.

Relief! A sign saying “Cartoucherie” pointed up a narrow motor road between the spring trees. I trudged up the quiet road; then I saw the wall of a large farmyard. I walked along it and came to the wide entrance gate. Inside the enormous courtyard, over the cobbles, sand, and horse dung, small children were learning to ride. One little boy was crying, but the instructor was cruelly impervious to tears.

I felt a little daft when I asked for a theatre in these circumstances, but the girl in jodhpurs just pointed her riding crop nonchalantly at a large barn across the courtyard behind an enormous oak. Above the barn door was written “Theatre du Soleil,” the Theatre of the Sun. I had found the famous headquarters of Ariane Mnouchkine and her company. Then the penny dropped. Of course, “cartoucherie” means cartridge factory, and this very sensibly, when it was still a gunpowder store, had operated as far away from human habitation as possible. Ariane Mnouchkine is the Joan Littlewood of Paris, a cult figure, and perhaps the most famous postBrechtian director in France. She

has gathered a talented company around her and they work together away from the sophisticated city centre developing their own kind of ensemble work based ultimately on Brechtian principles. For whatever one’s politics, or whatever one thinks of Bertholt Brecht as a writer, his Marxist theatre theory has been perhaps the single most influential stage philosophy since the Second World War.

Mnouchkine is probably known to many New Zealanders from her superb film on the life of “Moliere” that has won plaudits at film festivals. I first encountered her work 15 years ago when she knocked London out with a riproaring re-enactment of the French Revolution at the Roundhouse.

We, the audience, stood in the centre of the arena while all around us on little stages the events of the fall of the Bastille and its consequences were performed by actors, puppets, masks, and machines. It was imagination run riot.

At the “Cartoucherie,” they were giving “Henry the Fourth” Part One by Shakespeare. The season

had long been sold out and I was told by the out-of-work actor who was filling in as desk clerk at my hotel, that the only way of getting in was going out to the forest wilderness and putting your name on a waiting list. This I did and was rewarded with a returned seat. The elderly stage manager came waving the ticket at me as I sat in the sun under the oak.

The performances began at 6.30 p.m. The huge hangar was filled with 600 young French people thirsting for Shakespeare and Mnouchkine’s daring. The piece ran for five hours, including a 45minute respite for dinner — hard brown bread sandwiches and wine. Delicious!

Mnouchkine had directed the play as a Japanese Kabuki opera. All the dialogue was accompanied by drums and plucked instruments. The actors, most gloriously clad in glimmering silks in Japanese style, danced and leapt to the music and the words. As both actor and audience, I felt the enormous emotional release of this method. How often when possessed by the power of Shakespeare or music has one

wanted to leap in the air with the energy building up inside one. Here, Mnouchkine had encouraged her Hal and Hotspur at the peak of their passion to surge into the air and spin in fury or bravery. The Falstaff, because of bulk, looked as though he might levitate but never quite made it. It was not Shakespeare, but it was wonderful. I say this because, in going for this style, the psychological subtlety of the play and the verbal shimmer were lost. The compensations, however, were great.

Associates and followers of Bertholt Brecht dominate other European theatres. In Geneva, Benno Besson, Brecht’s favourite assistant and most important pupil, still holds sway. I loved his work in Berlin 20 years ago. His productions of Aristophanes and Offenbach were the most inventive and funny things in East Berlin Theatre then.

This time, in Venice, I saw his touring production of a fairy play by the eighteenth century Italian writer Carlo Gozzi called "The Green Bird.” It is a fantastic piece, very like Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in tone and action.

The scenery was made of beautiful rags which lifted to reveal vistas of magic gardens or subterranean prisons. The actors wore very light rubber masks that encased their entire heads but allowed facial expression underneath to translate on the light rubber surfaces. The clothes were at once tatters and glorious creations. The magic bird flew. The scenery sneezed. The wicked woman crumpled to nothing. It was a world at once childlike and deeply serious. This production has won all the French awards going. The Italian, Georgio Strehler, is the doyen of Marxist directors

outside the communist block. His Teatro Piccolo di Milan has been the foremost permanent Italian theatre since the war and his productions of Brecht, Shakespeare, and the Italian classics (both plays and operas) have been perhaps the most acclaimed Brechtian productions in Western Europe. He is expert in exposing the social circumstances in which a work was created.

For example, his amazing and hilarious production of Goldoni's most famous play “The Servant of Two Masters,” which I saw one Sunday afternoon in Milan, shows a company of travelling Italian comedians who have set up their stage in the middle of a vast baroque room. The play is performed in a circle of candlelight and we see the actors drift off and sit in the shadows in their own sordid personae. There is no doubt they are the exploited servants of greater masters whom we never see.

Because there are few sociallycommitted writers of a quality commensurate with the talents of socially committed directors like Mnouchkine, Besson, and Strehler. it is not odd that they have turned to the great plays of the past (often the most light-hearted ones) to convey their social philosophy. It is also notable that they have ostentatiously deserted naturalism for ritual, extravagance, and high style. So whether you agree with the political basis or not, the performances that they present are always exciting and stimulating to the imagination.

All these directors are heavilysubsidised by their governments despite the fact that their political philosophy is directly opposed to that of those in power. Other governments, please copy.