Returning to the Circle

One of the surprises when I entered my freshman undergraduate year was that I tested so high in German that I was put in an advanced literature class where most of the other classmates were graduate students. A rather stern group, as I recall, and I was a bit intimidated, but I was glad that we'd be reading Kafka's Metamorphesis which I'd only read in English up to that point.

However, the first story we were to read was Bertolt Brecht's Der Augsburger Kreidekreis (The Ausburg Chalk Circle). This short fable set in war time raised the question about what determines a worthy parent stuck with me through the years. I have always wanted to see a production of Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle which is an evolution of his story which he borrowed or stole from ancient China.

Last night I got to see the opening preview of the American Conservatory Theater's production directed by John Doyle, noted minimalist who had great success with deconstructionist versions of Sweeney Todd and Company. While certain Brechtian influences figure heavily in the former and this production had some of that show's cast members, deconstructing Brecht is a tricky business.
The play is intentionally disjointed, non-realistic and didactic. If you don't like being preached at, don't go see Brecht. What's most difficult with Brecht is whether or not there can be any emotion or heart injected into the presentation of the characters which are archetypes and representations after all. The cast in this production featured actors who did seem to go beyond archetypes, but when they were engaging, I'm not sure what I was engaged with. Especially engaging were Omozé Idehenre as the surrogate mother on trial and Manoel Felciano as the singer/narrator who has a particularly fetching voice and played Tobias in Doyle's production of Sweeney Todd. Though I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more in Ragtime. It's fitting that he played the same role Mandy Patinkin played in the movie version of the same story since he recalled a younger Patinkin in voice and demeanor.




The show featured songs but is certainly not a musical. Those songs are certainly where the show is most didactic. I came away finding the whole production engaging enough but not compelling. Brecht is ever the curious creature to watch and read, but it's hard to remember what the point was the morning after. However, after exploring Manoel's website linked above, it appears he has Catalan heritage and has at least one song you can download from his site in Catalan. That alone made the night worthwhile.

Junk Thief's Theater News

We're off to see this at American Conservatory Theater tonight. We'll try to follow with a review.

An Abbreviated History of Gentleman Thug Life through Male Millenery

Anyone who has made a home visit to see Junk Thief is well aware of the always congested hat stand. And, yes, it's covered mainly with hats not caps. Now we have no complaint with caps per se and do have a few in our collection.

However we do object to caps being used as a place to put a message, advertisement or random logo. These caps, often called ball caps, really should be worn only if they do celebrate a particular team of reverence, such as this one for Cuba back in the days when Fidel was known to make his way onto the diamond.

Those that tell people how bad you are, what a hot babe you are, etc., should not see the light of day. If one wishes to use hats, caps or other accessories to announce criminal behavior it should be done through the demeanor of the aforementioned headgear, not some vapid slogan embroidered above its brim.
Thus not only our hat stand but closet and even offsite storage are filled with very few caps but plenty of fedoras, Panamas, bowlers, porkpies, bucket hats and other appropriate headgear.

The question remains: Do any of these more specifically announce that one is a junk thief or, if you prefer, a gentleman thug?

One of the earliest examples was Raffles, the E.W. Hornung Victorian who was alternately called the gentleman thief or gentleman thug and was typically pictured wearing a top hat, and sometimes an eye mask on the order of Zorro.
Far less a gentleman but clearly a thug, Macheath from both the stage and film portrayals of Macheath/Mackie Messer/Mack the Knife in Weimar Germany's Die Dreigroschenoper/
Threepenny Opera favored the bowler.

When Lincoln Kirstein decided in the 1930s to pose for Walker Evans, he opted for a bowler's brim to disguise his eyes as he let a stink stick droop from his lips.

Kirstein was probably much more a gentleman than a thug, but his posing was long an inspiration for Junk Thief who owns more than one bowler but has yet to find the one that perfectly captures the appropriate Weimar vibe of channeling early Victorian London.
So, what truly is a thug hat? Or, more appropriately a gentleman thug hat?

Wouldn't Macheath's creator, Bertolt Brecht, know a thing or two about that? Brecht was something of a Junk Thief himself since he reportedly stole the better part of his work from others or took credit for work originally written by his wives, girlfriends and apprentices.

We've heard this particular cap -- and yes, we agree that it's a cap not a hat -- a number of things including newsboy cap, flat cap, cabbie cap. But according to a source no less definitive than J. Peterman calls it a thug cap, and they have marked theirs down from $119 to just $92.

Now if paying so little for a cap makes you feel less like a gentleman, check out local Cable Car Clothiers which has one for $268. They also are your go-to source for plaid deerstalker hats for just shy of $300. (We here at Junk Thief are still conflicted about the new Sherlock Holmes movie opting for not featuring the titular character in a deer stalker.)

Speaking of Weimar

This version still holds up for me as I've been transferring my beloved 1976 LP to MP3, remembering when I saw it live and had a big crush on Raul Julia that went back to his Sesame Street and Two Gentlemen of Verona days. And in his hand, Nine wasn't that bad.


And speaking of Gisela May, here she is in 1981, eight years before the Berlin Wall fell in the DDR (a.k.a. East Germany) proving that the DDR wasn't all drab Stalinesque folk songs. At least her chorus boys were wearing red.

Winter Light, Winter Dark

There is something about early February that can always be tricky, especially if you live in northern California. We don't have a real winter here, but we have the rainy season. It doesn't get cold here (some idiots here call 45 degrees "cold"). But it gets wet, and we are deprived of my favorite type of light -- winter light.

The light in winter is so precious and stingy. I despise sunny, summer days, and I usually can't stand having direct sun on my skin -- except in winter. It is so delicate and precarious, hopeful and faint.

Winter Light is the title of one my favorite Bergman movies in which villagers question their faith in the nuclear age. I've been watching a lot of Bergman this winter -- currently on Wild Strawberries. It doesn't depress me, especially in the winter. Winter Light is also the title of one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt albums. While I will concede it's not her greatest, I think it's her most under-rated work. It's all about the warmth of home on a cold night, a beacon in the snow, to my mind at least.

Besides watching the Kurt Gerron bio-doc Prisoner in Paradise (dark, sad, fatalistic) I've been listening to a lot of Brecht and Weill. I became entranced by Brecht and Weill around age four when my pre-school played an instrumental version of the tunes from Die Dreigroschenoper. These two figured heavy in my life before Peter, Paul & Mary or the Beatles and still play a larger role. Brecht and Weill are perfect tunes for mid-winter nights, like a defiant cold fist in the face of adversity.

I have been transferring some of my favorite Deutsche Grammophon LPs of Weill and Brecht, especially those with Gisela May. Ah, Gisela May! No one holds a candle to Lenya's Weill recordings except for May.

There seems to be so much sadness and uncertainty in February -- from J.D. Salinger dying to those Teabaggers meeting in Nashville, like Weimar vermin trolling through the grave of Reagan to yank shreds of his rotting brain from his crypt in Simi Valley. All that talk of reviving Jim Crow literacy requirements and denying voting privileges to all non-English speakers and "celebrating" Reagan's 99th birthday. Watch out folks, are you ready to stomach a Reagan centennial next year that will culminate in 2012 right on target with the cataclysmic Mayan calendar? There was recently a move in the Bay Area to rename Mount Diablo to Mount Reagan. Wouldn't that be redundant? If it's called Mount Diablo, isn't it already named after Reagan?

But let's not dwell too much on the dark. Only a little over 1,100 cretins attended that teabag gig. Spring is around the corner. And there is plenty more Brecht and Weill to lift one's spirit

Dagmar's Deutsche Miserie

The weather in San Francisco has been horrific this weekend. After an almost too cool few days early in the week, we've had nearly 80 degree temperatures the past two days, making it miserable to be outside but requiring frequent trips into the heat to water plants that aren't accustomed to such horrible temperatures.

That's forced me to be inside much of the weekend but a good chance to complete Lenya Legacy DVD. Those interested in getting a copy can let me know. It's essentially a compilation of (mainly) Brecht/Weill songs introduced by Lotte Lenya and a rare, short documentary on her life and legacy. Mina Mazzini, Hildegard Knef, Nina Simone and Gisela May are all on hand, singing in a variety of languages.

The real joy of this, however, was discovering this very rare clip of Dagmar Krause singing "Surabaya Johnny". I only wish that it were in German, but she's no less dramatic in English. It reminds me why I think no one is better qualified to carry the torch of Lenya and Weill.

Little Dagmar came close to destroying at least a couple of my past relationships as I relentlessly played and played her definitive 1986 release Supply & Demand in which she sang the well known tunes of Brecht/Weill and the much lesser known but even more fascinating songs of Brecht/Eisler, the latter composed during their exile in Hollywood. Brecht and Weill were often praised for their sweet/sour or yin/yang combination, but Brecht and Eisler were more yang/yang, both ardent Communists and a much more intense, didactic experience.

And no one is better equipped to sing tunes like "Deutsche Miserie" and "The Lilly of Hell" than little Dagmar, the pint-sized red head sometimes called "The Voice of Armageddon". Hey, I'd take her over Mariah Carey any day.

I've also been listening to a good number of Dagmar's 1970s tunes with the pop band Slapp Happy, a German group that released mainly English language tunes.

Have Yourself a Very Weimar Weinachten

Am I the only one that caught the airing of the Rise and Fall of Mahagonny last night? Having long given up on any innovation coming from PBS, I do give a tip of the fedora to them for airing it at the peak of the gooey holiday specials. It was no surprise that Audra McDonald was brilliant and brought heart to a cartoon role, but at times she reminded me of Condi Rice -- a woman who whores herself to an evil empire in order to feed herself.=. Brecht's epic theater seems increasingly shrill and arch with the passage of time, but who can fault this production for melding together references to the Third Reich and Las Vegas. Mahagonny has long been a metaphor for many American boomtowns -- LA itself, Houston, Silicon Valley -- and echoes Kafka's Amerika.

This was a perfect finale to a year that brought us superb reissues of both Berlin Alexanderplatz and Threepenny Opera. I am humming Mortitat as I write this. "Violated...in her slumbers/Mackie, how much did you charge?"