1949 Mutter Courage

George Steiner was anti-Becketteer. In the last few pages of his book THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY, he says things to the effect that Beckett's plays are not theater but they make use of the theater. Steiner was a Brechteer. In the closing pages of the same book he says that the best stage production of any play he had seen was the 1949 Berliner Ensemble one of MUTTER COURAGE UND IHRE KINDER, directed by Brecht and starring his wife Helene Weigel in the title role. He says that at the end, when the body of her second son is brought in front of her, to avoid being arrested by the enemy troops, she has to deny him, she turns to the audience in the theater auditorium and give a mute shriek, Steiner says, "made us want to lower our heads as if a gust of wind was blowing over us." During my first visit to Bentley in his Manhattan flat, I brought up the subject of that l949 production, and Bentley told me that he attended that production, and he said he was going to tell something he hadn't said in print. He told me that between one scene and another, Weigel appears as if she has aged 20 years with her face lowered and her jaw dropped. After the show there was a sort of press conference during which she was asked about the magic make-up that made her look 20 years older. She burst into an uprorious laughter and then she put her hand into her mouth and took out her artificial teeth, and she looked, as in the play, 20 years older. "This is the magic make-up I used," said Weigel. Bentley concluded the anecdote by saying that he and the others dropped their jaws in total astonishment. Bentley and I laughed wildly at the incident