The Arts

Brecht Play a Clever Choice

St. Joan Visions into

Harsh Reality

Unity Theatre: The Visions of Simone

Maclhard

It was clever of the Unity Theatre to find a Brecht play entirely unknown in Britain, have it translated, and give it what is said to be its first English language production. Clever because the theatre is an amateur organization and its standards of acting and production are in general not much better than pretty average amateur; the interest of a production here is almost exactly equivalent to the interest of the play produced.

Not that this play is a forgotten masterpiece: it has many signs of its original topical purposes. being a variation on the Joan of Arc story written at the very period (1941-43) when Ivor Novello was presenting a difforent, musical variation on the London stage and Hollywood was casting MIle. Michele Morgan in a third.

It was written by Brecht in collaborationi with Feuchtwanger, after a novel by the latter, and if it aimed at immediate popularity it seems to have gone wide of its mark.

This is probably because of the dramatic method employed, which is intricate and characteristic. Simone Machard is a simple child in a French village in June, 1940, who is sufficiently transported by reading about Joan of Arc to see herself in the role and have visions in which the characters of the play's every-day action reappear, strangely transformed, as figures of the St. Joan story.

Ostensibly we see them as though through a child's eyes, but in fact, of course, the visions are used to provide a bitterly satirical commentary on the main action. Simone/Joan dreams of the glory and good of France while the world falls about her ears; she tries valiantly to make it fit her dreams, and instead her dreams come all too relentlessly to fit the harsh realities of the situation.

If not a major work. The Visions of Simone Machard is a splendidly effective piece of theatre, and the company seem inspired by it, notably Miss Anna Kashden in the long and difficult part of Simone; the orginal music by Mr. Hanns Eisler. admirably recorded by an anonymous ensem-ble, is a considerable asset to the production.