Over at the Guardian, Alison Croggon treats Edward Bond (!) as if he's a student in one of her classes. Ah, critics!
Tone aside, the opening paragraph poses an interesting Bond thought (and Croggon response):
"The playwright Edward Bond raised a few eyebrows recently by, among other things, dubbing Brecht "the playwright of Auschwitz". His argument was so patently absurd that I barely hiccuped. Instead, another statement caught my eye. Bond was speaking of a production of his play The Woman, which he directed at the National: "I went back to see it after it had been playing for a week and the actors were doing it as if it were Tom Stoppard. They were doing 'theatre'. But drama is not 'theatre'."You could almost hear his disgust."
Definitely check it out. Punchy stuff.
On a side note: I find it amusing that Alison finds more distaste in Bond's trash-talking a term-of-art than how he characterizes Brecht. I guess we all have our priorities, no?
Do I really seem like a head mistress? Gosh. That explains all those sweat-stained letters from English public schoolboys.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Bond is trembling in his boots.
As an aside, the Brecht thing has been widely treated of in the blogosphere and has been well answered. Not that I found it any less outrageous than Billington did.