Baal

Presented as a Malthouse Theatre/STC co-production, this is a stylish adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s notorious first play. Brecht wrote the play when he was 20 years old, and although it was heavily re-written by Brecht throughout his life, it is distinctly the work of a young writer deeply obsessed with the poetic beauties of expressionist language, rich in the yearning vitality and egotism of youth.

Director Simon Stone taps into this expressionistic vein, transforming Brecht’s sublime poetics into a series of stark tableaux. In terms of production values, the evolution of this series is a very slick piece of work, featuring a complex folding set, three kinds of stage rain, some very fancy monochromatic lighting and more nudity than a Spencer Tunick sleepover.

Baal (Thomas M Wright) is the embodiment of youthful genius. He is either a poetic visionary or visionary poet. He stands outside of society, seducing and scandalising by turns. He is the archetypal artist who chooses to burn out rather than fade away, evoking the ghosts of other legendary half-mythical artists such as Caravaggio, Marlowe, Rimbaud and I guess Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison.

The last link is the important one. Baal is here described as the kind of disturbed rock’n’roll idol who is only accepted by society as a genius after his death. Thus Baal figures the revolt of young artists, especially in this case male artists, against their middle-class origins. He is the satanic beacon that seduces other more impressionable young folk into similar anti-cultural acts of revolt against the good order of the suburbs.

But despite the implication of rock’n’roll enthusiasm, despite the vibrant young bodies that Stone sends sprawling one against the other, despite the saturation of blood and water, the electric guitar and a kind of unfinished rawness in the text (co-adapted by Tom Wright and Simon Stone), the play leaves one with a lingering feeling of emptiness. Even as the scenes individually present at a high emotional pitch, there is a sense of underwhelming quiescence across the production as a whole.

This is partly a fault of the adapted script, which seems itself seduced by Brecht’s magnetic poetry, unable to commit either to breaking away or remaining faithful, seen especially in the confused handling of Baal’s natural misogyny.

But partly it is no fault at all, merely a reflection of Brecht’s own essential coolness. The master playwright wrote of his first play that, despite the high poetry, he hoped that it left the spectator’s “splendid isolation” intact. It is this theme of isolation that persists in the starkness of the set, the oppressive shadows and the lonely music.

Whether or not one finds this feeling of quiescence properly affecting, it is nevertheless somewhat beside the point to complain of it Brecht where, at the end of the day, the playwright’s object is always to make you reflect.