GOINS TO THEATER
99
monotony of
The Brig
seemed much less of a fault. Both casts were
drilled by professional military men, and the theatrical substance of both
plays consists of the rituals of saluting, bed-making, running, drilling,
taking punishment, target practice, etc. But there the difference ends.
Next to the stunning brutalities of a Marine prison scored, (rather
than written), by Kenneth H. Brown and staged by Judith Malina,
the ordeals of an RAF training camp seemed absolutely idyllic.
The
Brig
was good because it almost obliterated its own content, and dared
to
be mainly its vehement form.
Chips
is first of all a story. While
The
Brig
wishes to cause pain to its audience,
Chips With Everything
cannot
ever cease to wish to be charming.
Chips
is not a bad play, just a weak
unconvim;ing one.
In
contrast to the calculated falseness of
Luther
and
&liar) of the Sad Cate,
though, it did make a certain modest and
authentic use of the resources of the theater. There is the excellent
climax of the Christmas party scene, when the cadets, led by Pip, (agree–
ably played by Gary Bond), refuse to cater to their officers' patronizing
view of lower-class culture (rock 'n' roll, etc.) and start singing a folksong
which rises to a defiant crescendo of clapping and syncopated beating
on glasses, cups, and tables. The meaning of this act as a piece of
defiance--that is, as part of the plot of the play-was lost in the beauty
and vigor of the act as a moment of sensuous spectacle. (There is a
similarly wonderful scene of impromptu music-making at the close of
Kurosawa's film of Gorky's
The Lower Depths.)
The other good scene
in
Chips With Everything
is also wordless. It is the scene when, again
led by Pip, the cadets undertake a raid on the compound where the
camp's coal is stored, there being no more coal in the group's hut to
make tea. The entire maneuver is carried out before the audience: it
requires scaling a wire fence with split-second timing so that no one
will be caught by the guard on his rounds. But even these good scenes
were not enough because of the general softness of the play, exemplified
by the entirely implausible surrender of Pip to the paternalism of the
officer class from which he has tried to escape.
About the only Broadway production which had enough of a share
of theatrical vigor to merit some sustained praise was Tony Richardson's
staging of Brecht's
The Resistabie Rise of Arturo Ui,
which opened in
mid-November and closed after five performances. It is just possible
that
Arturo Ui
(the title as foreshortened on Broadway) closed so
hastily because of the virtues of Richardson's production, a great many
of whose effects are reported to have been borrowed from the staging
by the Berliner Ensemble. But I rather imagine it was simply because
Brecht is still too austere a taste for the Broadway audience. Brecht's
