Customer Reviews

The Mother

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Originally based on a novel by Gorsky, the play is set in Russia during the throws of revolution. We follow the 'motherly' character of Pelagea Vlasova as she becommes entwined with her son's political movements in the hopes of liberating the working class. Against the turmoil of Russia's troubled nation, the play prevokes a political awakening in both the audience and the character of Pelagea Vlasova herself. This has to be one of Brecht's most 'Brechtian' works. Strongly in the style of Alexander Solzhnenitsyn, not only is it an excellent read, but it also strongly underlines Brecht's political views against the shadow of the repressed proletariate. His many unique styles of theatre are woven into the highly controversial text, with examples of his 'verfremdungsteffekt' methods shining through the script. This play is a must for any Brecht followers, and will also appeal to anyone interested in the Marxist movement and it's political ideas and concepts. The play is simply brilliant for those of us who want to read something that actually makes us stop and think. It is a piece of literature that has the benifit of being entertaining as well as educating, a tricky combination to master. Written with Brecht's usual flair for the ironic, the play will move you steadily through a rainbow of emmotions until at last we come to a climatic conclusion; not so much in atmosphere, as in ideas.

What a wonderful play! This play is set in Russia and is about the transformation of Pelagea Vlassova, an illiterate, somewhat narrow and worn, older woman. She starts out suspicious of her son's new friends -- a group of young Bolsheviks who make leaflets in her home! They endanger, she feels, her already precarious and poverty stricken existence. But as she questions and observes these youth she is drawn into the revolution and comes alive, changing into a badass revolutionary herself: creative, daring and courageous. Music and song accompany her transformation -- and the fourth wall is broken many times as the actors take turns talking frankly to the audience about the story as it unfolds.

More than one socialist commentator has noted that a revolution is made at the base of society by a combination of experiences that cause the masses to throw of their former servitude, indifference or fear and just go for it. Needless to say those times are few and far between so that it is important to study the mechanics of those changes even if, as here, they are changes in overwhelmingly agrarian Russia just entering the capitalist production process in the early 20th century. I believe, as Brecht obviously did when he brought it to the theater in highly industrialized Germany, that those same sentiments would also be expressed in more developed capitalist societies when tensions reached the breaking point.

Brecht has adapted for the stage this story written by the great Russian writer, and sometime revolutionary, Maxim Gorky. The story line in both cases is fairly straight forward. A working class mother with roots still on the farm is fearful that her son's Bolshevik revolutionary activities will bring disaster on him and the family. As the story unfolds and the son's commitment grows in line with the government's repressive policies the mother starts, slowly, very slowly, to get the point of his work. Along the way her own `politics' change and by the end she is as committed to the cause as her son. Her banner is now red.

On the stage this story gets told amid banners and music that add to the dramatic effect. In either format this is a powerful story and good piece of socialist propaganda. I remember an old German Communist Party member once telling me that in his youth he was actually recruited to the Communist Youth League by this play. Apparently the German CP set up literature tables in the lobby of the theater and at intermission and the end would sign up theater patrons after they had experienced the play.