Four Walls And A Roof, EIF theatre review: 'a gentle exploratory lecture'

Four Walls And A Roof ★★★

The Studio until 17 August

The story of Bertolt Brecht, and his long exile from Nazi Germany, must be one of the most studied in the whole history of 20th century art and culture.

His flight from Berlin with his wife and creative partner Helene Weigel, and their children; the increasingly recognised female co-writers and lovers - Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarethe Steffin, Ruth Berlau - that he left behind, or took with him into exile; the final harsh wartime journey via Moscow to California - all of this has been much debated in recent decades, as has Brecht’s eventual 1947 questioning by the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, which caused him to flee again, back to East Berlin.

In their 100 minute performance Four Walls And A Roof, though, Berlin-based Lebanese artists Lina Majdalanie and Ravi Mroue seek to bring a new perspective to Brecht’s story, by comparing his flight from Germany and his decision to leave the USA, through the prism of their own experience.

They do so in the style of a gentle exploratory lecture, supported by projected visual fragments of evidence - including two photographs of Brecht taken at his moments of departure in 1933 and 1947 - and by Henrik Kairies at the piano, belting out beautiful, complex 1930’s political songs by Brecht and Hans Eisler that shame the crudity of the HUAC’s questioning.

And if the show lacks theatrical energy, it is never less than searching and thought-provoking; not least about the shadows of censorship now gathering again in Berlin, as free speech about Palestine becomes taboo in the safe haven Majdalanie and Mroue thought they had found, for themselves and their work. Joyce McMillan

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