A Man’s a Man OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF A Man’s a Man

  

  Who Do You Think You Are? Wrong! ‘A Man’s a Man,’ a Brecht Rarity, is Revived

  Charles Isherwood

  January 30, 2014: Galy Gay, the hapless protagonist of Bertolt Brecht’s 1925 play A Man’s a Man, falls victim to several mind games during the course of his brainwashing at the hands of British soldiers stationed in India. But perhaps the most unhappily symbolic trick played upon him, in the Classic Stage Company’s new production of this rarely seen play, is his coerced belief that a pile of barrels draped with a sari is actually an elephant, one that he is duped into trying to sell, thus falling into hot water with the authorities. For despite its often broadly comic tone, this hard-working but uninvolving production moves with the lumbering tread of a pachyderm in no hurry to get to the watering hole.

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• HOLLYWOOD REPORTER REVIEW OF A Man’s a Man

  

  A Man's a Man: Theater Review

  Frank Scheck

  January 30, 2014: There’s a reason that Bertolt Brecht’s works, especially his more obscure ones, are rarely staged today despite their intellectual and philosophical fecundity. His brand of epic, agitprop theater inevitably comes across as hopelessly dated even in the most expert hands. Such is the case with the Classic Stage Company’s revival of his rarely performed 1926 work A Man’s a Man. Despite an exuberant staging by director Brian Kulick and the addition of some tuneful songs by pop songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), this determinedly cartoonish production never fully succeeds in delivering the playwright’s message about man’s inherent mutability with sufficient bite.

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• THEATERMANIA REVIEW OF A Man’s a Man

  

  A Man's a Man

  Zachary Stewart

  January 30, 2014: It may be freezing in New York, but inside Classic Stage Company, it's tropical. Plastic palm trees canopy the stage, the trunks made entirely out of large orange oil drums. This is set designer Paul Steinberg's vision of the British Raj circa 1925, as imagined by Bertolt Brecht in his play A Man's a Man. With an English translation by Gerhard Nellhaus (Brecht's original was written in German), this production features new music by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening and last season's CSC production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle). Theater is usually very good at enlarging its subjects (in this case war and identity), offering a view from all sides in an effort to foster a richer discussion. Unfortunately, those oil drums are the harbingers of a disappointingly reductive production that's a little bit like being cornered at an alt-rock concert by a militantly anti-war lefty who insists "it's all about the oil, man."

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• FINANCIAL TIMES REVIEW OF A Man’s a Man

  

  A Man’s a Man, Classic Stage Company, New York – Review

  Brendan Lemon

  January 30, 2014: Of the 1939 film Gunga Din, based on a Kipling poem set in British-colonial India, Bertolt Brecht wrote: “I was amused and touched because this utterly distorted account was an artistic success and considerable resources in talent and ingenuity had been applied in making it.” Considerable talent has also been applied to the Classic Stage Company production of Brecht’s 1925 play A Man’s A Man, also set in colonialist India. But I regret to say that I was neither much amused nor touched.

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• AM NEW YORK REVIEW OF A Man’s a Man

  

  Theater review: 'A Man's Man,' 2 stars

  Matt Windman

  January 30, 2014: Off-Broadway’s Classic Stage Company — which has taken a lead role in recent years in reviving the too- long neglected plays of 20th century political playwright Bertolt Brecht, including classics like Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle — may have overreached in bringing back A Man’s a Man, an early Brecht farce that is far inferior in quality.

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