The Brutal Questions

Printed in Dagbladet, Oslo 31.05.07 by Andreas Wiese

Die Massnahme (The Measures Taken) by Bertolt Brecht & Hanns Eisler
Transiteatret, Bergen International Festival, choir, orchestra, theatre and Communism – with elegant, brutal openness

An excellent theatre oratorio that in a very short time was banned by the Nazis, slaughtered by the liberal democrats and refused to be performed by Stalin’s regime must have strong qualities.
Die Massnahme or The Measures Taken, however, has still got provocative power.
Particularly when it is staged so consistently as Tore Vagn Lid of Transiteatret does at this year’s Bergen International Festival, in impressive cooperation with the choir Skrik, the Grieg Academy and the Norwegian Military Band with Eberhart Kloke as their conductor.
With double batteries, kettledrums, percussion, wind players and a choir of fifty – in addition to four agitators who in an objective way present their question to the audience. The result is splendid total theatre.

We are at a popular meeting where some heroes of the revolution are to be celebrated – but the heroes interrupt the celebration. They have killed a comrade and want to present the problem to the people. The four of them have worked as secret agents in the Chinese city of Mukden. The coolies are being suppressed and people are in distress – but shall one help on a small scale, or work for the big, final victory? A comrade fails, not by cowardice or omission, but precisely by helping those who suffer; by his impatience he jeopardizes the whole cause.
The four are forced to kill him – but did they do the right thing? This is a question liberal democracies easily avoid: Who and how much can be sacrificed to win a fair cause.
Brecht’s texts have an inexorable, corrosive moral: He does not only ask the big questions, he also answers them – so one hardly hears the other, smaller and not asked questions, for the course of history does not run on rails – it proceeds tentatively in unknown terrain.

The reason why Lid’s direction succeeds is also the actors who manage to present problems, not only play parts. A big screen and sound tracks are used with intelligence and care, and the musical forces bring forth the grandiose nakedness of Eissler’s music.  But what does actually the play tell us about the precautions (the measures taken) today?    
The piece shows clearly the logic of the ideology: The most efficient measures taken are the correct ones. Once this was the logic of Communism, but it is still the logic of Capitalism: Even though someone must suffer, the laws of market forces will finally lead to increased prosperity. The opposition between the two ideologies was abolished by Den Xiaoping: It does not matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. It is very much to the point that Milton Friedman appears on a big screen during the performance. 

The reason why Stalin’s Communists did not like the play was the brutal frankness of the performance, revealing the moves of the regime. And today the objections are building up during the performance: It is always the survivors who own history and relate it. The dead cannot speak. Nor can learning plays give answers to questions that are not asked – and this production is clear enough in its consequence to show us that, too.