A Man’s a Man
Opening Night: January 30, 2014
Closing: February 16, 2014
Theater: Classic Stage Comp.
A Man’s A Man tells the story of Galy Gay, a simple man out shopping who, by the trickery of some soldiers, is turned into a soldier, enlisted into Her Majesty’s Armed Forces and, eventually, reassembled into a killing machine.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
January 30, 2014
Galy Gay, the hapless protagonist of Bertolt Brecht’s 1925 play A Man’s a Man, falls victim to several mind games during the course of his brainwashing at the hands of British soldiers stationed in India. But perhaps the most unhappily symbolic trick played upon him, in the Classic Stage Company’s new production of this rarely seen play, is his coerced belief that a pile of barrels draped with a sari is actually an elephant, one that he is duped into trying to sell, thus falling into hot water with the authorities. For despite its often broadly comic tone, this hard-working but uninvolving production moves with the lumbering tread of a pachyderm in no hurry to get to the watering hole.
READ THE REVIEW
January 30, 2014
There’s a reason that Bertolt Brecht’s works, especially his more obscure ones, are rarely staged today despite their intellectual and philosophical fecundity. His brand of epic, agitprop theater inevitably comes across as hopelessly dated even in the most expert hands. Such is the case with the Classic Stage Company’s revival of his rarely performed 1926 work A Man’s a Man. Despite an exuberant staging by director Brian Kulick and the addition of some tuneful songs by pop songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), this determinedly cartoonish production never fully succeeds in delivering the playwright’s message about man’s inherent mutability with sufficient bite.
READ THE REVIEW
January 30, 2014
It may be freezing in New York, but inside Classic Stage Company, it’s tropical. Plastic palm trees canopy the stage, the trunks made entirely out of large orange oil drums. This is set designer Paul Steinberg’s vision of the British Raj circa 1925, as imagined by Bertolt Brecht in his play A Man’s a Man. With an English translation by Gerhard Nellhaus (Brecht’s original was written in German), this production features new music by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening and last season’s CSC production of Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle). Theater is usually very good at enlarging its subjects (in this case war and identity), offering a view from all sides in an effort to foster a richer discussion. Unfortunately, those oil drums are the harbingers of a disappointingly reductive production that’s a little bit like being cornered at an alt-rock concert by a militantly anti-war lefty who insists "it’s all about the oil, man."
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 30, 2014
Of the 1939 film Gunga Din, based on a Kipling poem set in British-colonial India, Bertolt Brecht wrote: “I was amused and touched because this utterly distorted account was an artistic success and considerable resources in talent and ingenuity had been applied in making it.” Considerable talent has also been applied to the Classic Stage Company production of Brecht’s 1925 play A Man’s A Man, also set in colonialist India. But I regret to say that I was neither much amused nor touched.
READ THE REVIEW
January 30, 2014
Off-Broadway’s Classic Stage Company — which has taken a lead role in recent years in reviving the too- long neglected plays of 20th century political playwright Bertolt Brecht, including classics like Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle — may have overreached in bringing back A Man’s a Man, an early Brecht farce that is far inferior in quality.
READ THE REVIEW