Printed in VG, Oslo, 01.06.2007
by ASTRID SLETBAKK
Throw of the dice 6 TEATERGARASJEN, Bergen «Die Massnahme» by Berthold Brecht. MUSIC: Hanns Eisler. DIRECTION: Tore Vagn Lid. CONDUCTOR: Eberhard Kloke. SET DESIGN: Kyrre Bjørkås. VIDEO: Rune Andreassen.ACTORS: Tor Christian Bleikli, Arild Vestre, Cecilie Jørstad and Aasmund Kaldestad (tenor).
CHOIR: SKRIK and students from The Grieg Academy.
ORCHESTRA: The Military Band of Western Norway.
With naked objectivity, dry facts, and not least Hanns Eisler’s music, the director Tore Vagn Lid creates splendid theatre out of Brecht’s Die Masssnahme.
Lid takes Brecht seriously. This is a learning play ruled by a message and not by feelings. And it deals with the big questions. Four Communist agitators return home to be acclaimed as heroes by the Party. But because they have shot a comrade, they now want to present their case and ask to be judged by their equals.
“Die Massnahme” means “the precaution” or “the measures taken”.
The conflict between the one and the four out there on the Chinese borderland was between cause and feelings. The four are willing to sacrifice people and overlook suffering if it can serve the cause: To change the world to a better place.
The fifth agitator is governed by feelings, helps the sufferers and compromises himself as well as his comrades and the cause they are fighting for to the power holders. His work would have eased the situation for one day. The four work for a permanent change.
The question is if they did the right thing by sacrificing him for the Cause.
After the first ever night in 1930 the play was banned by Hitler and Stalin, and disapproved of in the post –war USA.
Today, after the fall of Communism, “Die Massnahme” is stripped of specific – isms, and raises basic moral questions. Obviously the text leans towards an answer, but it is more important that it involves the audience in a more general set of problems, engages us and sends us out to look for an answer. No matter what era, we are all under systems and attitudes that launch us into a moral no-man’s-land between power and powerlessness, feelings and pragmatic reason.
Feelings and reason
On the stage we meet four actors who report the course of events directly addressed to the audience. Careful use of sound scenery and video creates scenic variation. Empathy with the roles, or sentimentality, is kept at a distance. Neither the ones on stage nor we who are in the panel of judges are supposed to, just like the fifth comrade, mix feelings and reason.
In spite of its objectivity, the questions catch on and engage us. And Eisler’s music, despite its clean-cut sobriety, gives the performance an increasingly intense pulse. Text and music are connected as one unit. When the text changes direction, the music takes on a new expression.
The production in Bergen is a Nordic first night more than 70 years after the first ever night. It is commissioned by the Bergen International Festival, but hopefully it will not be stowed away for good after a few hectic festival days.