The Mother, by Brecht

I just got back from a musical celebrating Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution.

Yes, really, The Mother, by Bertolt Brecht, based on a novel by Maxim Gorky. But this production had all new music.

It was a real split brain experience for me. It was well done, with charismatic actors with great voices and nice tunes. The staging was wild. The theater was set up as rows of wooden table which the audience sat at - but then the actors walked and sang on the tables. Katherine Keberlein, as the mother herself, was excellent. That's her to the right in the photo.



Sarah Pretz, to the left was a finely intimidating czarist police official. (I assume the part was written for a man, but there are a lot more actresses than actors at auditions in Chicago, and you learn to expect to sometimes see women-playing-men in storefront theater here. It's sort of the reverse of what happened in Shakespeare's time, where one expected to see males-playing-females on stage.)

I thought Stephanie Polt, as Masha, had an extra bit of star quality for some reason.

Alas, I know how Bolshevism ended.
And don't really feel that it can be defended.