Saint Joan of the Stockyards
Bertolt Brecht’s pre-Hitler agitprop drama on the wily evils of Capitalism destroying his Germany in the last years of the weak and failing Weimar democracy was first broadcast on Berlin radio in 1932. He based it on HAPPY END, co-written with Elisabeth Hauptmann, and followed a pattern of work beginning with his and Kurt Weill’s THE THREEPENNY OPERA.
Most of us know this play as SAINT JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS, from Eric Bentley’s translation. Writer Peter Mellencamp’s new translation/ version makes the play even darker than Bentley’s, in part reflected in his slight change of title from STOCKYARD to SLAUGHTERHOUSE.
Brecht used his plays as political/social bludgeons against the economic evils of his day, and a cursory examination of his plot makes them all too-relevant in today’s climate. Joan Dark is a young and naïve religious woman, in 1920s Chicago, whose “Black Straw Hats” group (modeled on the Salvation Army) tries to help the poor from the rapacious claws of the fatcat meat-packing plant owners, specially one Pierpont Mauler, a handsome, charismatic richman full of economic chicanery. He has cornered the market in beef – on the hoof and in the can – committing high-treason in the eyes of his other rich competitors, especially when it means a slow death to many of the non-unionized workers.
Joan underestimates the power these folk have and, coupled with the ignorance and the fear from the workers, soon learns what starving in winter on the streets is like for most of her fellow Berliners. Her “saintliness” is no safeguard of success and Brecht lets us know what fate is in store for her, especially in her dawning understanding that even her beloved Black Straw Hats organization isn’t immune to the pervasive corruption surrounding her.
Director Michael Rothhaar has used the tiny black-box space at Pacific Resident Theatre well, with everything precise and organized. He has done well to produce a historical play that is deserving of attention. But what he hasn’t been able to do is make Brecht’s propagandistic play fully meaningful to us, even in today’s economic maelstrom. Brecht would have applauded Rothhaar’s minimalist sets and props (mainly hand-constructed boxes which serve various uses). And he has cast it well: Dalia Vosylius as Joan Dark and Andrew Parks as the wily Pierpont Mauler (get it? Someone who claws his way to success) highlight the actors. Others who contribute in several roles are Daniel Riordan, Penny Safranek and Linda Lodge.
But what fails (at least for me) was any emotional involvement with Brecht’s characters; that’s how Brecht wanted it, of course – intellectual concerns, not emotional one. I’d like to care – these are real people leading desperate lives. But because the director has asked some of his actors to bellow instead of clearly speaking, the “alienation” effect is off-putting, thus undercutting any desired emotional wallop.
However, for theatre-historical buffs, you won’t go wrong coming to see a rarely-performed play in a more-than-decent production.