Theodor Adorno, for example, offers a cluster of criticisms of Brecht: that
he is too simplistically utopian; that he is arrogant and wrong to think
that he could explain or represent the complexities of contemporary life
with any kind of accuracy or significance; that instructing audiences to
act upon such representations is therefore irresponsible and liable, in a
corrupted world, to lead to disaster if indeed it leads to anything at all.^56
For modern readers and theatregoers, the question remains what to
make of Brecht after the fall of communism. There is no doubt that many
of Brecht’s theatrical techniques stand alone as aesthetic developments,
which can be used with or without any commitments to Brecht’s political
programme. A company can do an ‘epic’ production of Hedda Gabler
without giving any reasons why; and that production can be a significant
aesthetic achievement.^57 What’s more, there’s plenty of evidence that
Brecht’s theories didn’t actually inform his practice as much as he might
have suggested.^58 Many of Brecht’s innovations were already favoured by
him before his full commitment to the Marxist cause. Finally, one can
question whether his performances ever really had the effect that he
desired and sometimes claimed on their behalf. A contemporary review of
one performance ofThe Motherdescribed it as‘afield-day for the like-
minded [...] but idiotic for the outsider’.^59 Elsom describes the opening
of a Brecht production ofThe Caucasian Chalk Circleas follows:
The proscenium arch was apparently made of solid marble but, as the lights
rose, that frame seemed to dissolve and [the spectator] saw through the
pillars, which were made of gauze, to the wings [...]. At a stroke, Brecht
sent out three signals–that there would be no attempt to sustain a natur-
alistic illusion, that bourgeois pretensions were gossamer-thin and that fan-
tasies of empire were sustained by the working classes, who could say no.^60One may sincerely doubt whether any but the‘like-minded’would have
been able to interpret Brecht’s signals, based on this performance alone.
With all of this in mind, one can perhaps construct a counterfactual Brecht
who never got distracted by Marx, and stuck to writing plays and poems.
Brecht commentator Eric Bentley, who worked with Brecht for a while,
prefers to see him in this light: as a one-off artistic genius, who should be
remembered not for his theories, but for his poems, plays and theatrical
techniques, as well as for his insights into human nature. The latter is
particularly ironic, as Bentley no doubt realises, because, as we have seen,
Brechtparticularlywanted to avoid giving the impression that he was offering
insights into human nature. Bentley describes teaching a class on Brecht:
Before we even began, the students were throwing technical terms at me
that they had picked up from old Brechtians or from the Meister’s own188 From the Stage to the World