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Senora Carrar's Rifles
SENORA CARRAR'S RIFLES. The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre. New
York. (Spring 1988).
Unfortunately, this is no Marxist _Riders to the Sea_, even
though that miniature masterpiece was allegedly Brecht's
inspiration for this political tract. What it sadly wants is
poetry, if not in the vein of John Millington Synge, or even
Federico Garcia Lorca, at least in that voice of rough simplicity
which gave power and passion to Galileo, Courage, and even Grusha.
Brecht is said to have later viewed this mini-drama as
"opportunistic" and a regression, and here he was his own best
critic. It was written in 1937, partly in admiration of the valor
of the Spanish Republicans in their doomed struggle against the
Loyalists, but also to rally support for the heroic peasants and
workers fighting fascism.
There is a parallel to _Riders_, in that Senora Carrar has a
son--her eldest--out at sea, fishing to provide food for the
impoverished family. Times are hard during the Civil War. Senora
Carrar has already lost her husband to the cause, but now she is
determined to protect her two sons from what seems certain death.
She has even concealed a cache of firearms to prevent them being
used in battle. Her uneasy neutrality, supported by the parish
priest, an avowed pacificist, she hopes will be rewarded by being
left in peace by both factions.
Her younger son, a callow youth, is unwillingly kept at home.
Her elder son has been ordered to carry on the family business of
fishing, with no adventures in rebellion of any sort. (_The House
of Bernarda Alba_ wasn't produced until 1945, so Brecht cannot be
accused of borrowing from Lorca in any way.) Senora Carrar, though
a sorrowing widow, is also a house-tyrant, but out of love and
fear, rather than the desire to dominate. From the harangues of
the neighbors and relatives who schmatically arrive in her simple
abode, it is clear that they think the proper duty of her oldest is
to be at the front, fighting against Franco and the Falangists.
Failing that, the least she can do, as an heroic relative--
labelled "The Worker" and briefly back from the front lines--makes
clear is to give her rifles to the cause. She pretends she has
none and protests her neutrality and her uneasy belief that it will
protect her family. The climactic moment, like the burning of Mrs.
Alving's orphanage, takes place offstage. The young fisherman is
sneselessly shot by a passing Loyalist patrol-boat. When his body
is brought into the home, her altogether predictable reversal is to
give up the hidden weapons. And her younger son, seized with the
spirit of heroism in a just cause, goes off with the rifles, his
fighting uncle, and--his now heroic mother! _Tableau.
It is admirable that miriam Colon invited a Chilean exile, now
a director at the Berliner Ensemble, to show his skills on an
Hispanic stage in New York, where there certainly is an interested
audience, with performances alternating Spanish and English. But,
although the play is virtually unknown and has a Spanish subject--
which ordinarily might commend it above other works in the Brecht
cannon on this occasion__it really isn't a very good or interesting
play, even considering the potential for boredom and the obvious in
most agit-prop dramas. The play, like so many wartime efforts, is
a prisoner of its own period and political program. You really had
to be there. And it wouldn't hurt if you were already a dedicated
partisan.
The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre's stationary home in
Manhattan is a remodeled old firehouse, and there have been a lot
of hot productions mounted there. Even with a tiny auditorium and
a miniscule stage, Miriam Colon and her designers have often
created impressive scenic illusions and, sometimes, downright
magic. Robert Klingelhoefer's elemental setting certainly
suggested poverty, but not with any kind of visual passion or even
some strong design elements which might at least have given the
_Lehrstueck_ quality of the drama potency. There were some
curtains and cables, suggestive of Brecht's Epic stage devices.
And that worn phrase from _Galileo_, about the unhappiness of lands
which need heroes, was in evidence, placarded in two languages!
From the human-scaled portrayal Miriam Colon gave of Senora
Carrar, seen against the more mannered, posturing performances of
her son and such passers-by as "The Wounded Man," "The Young Girl,"
and "The Priest," it was not clear where director Alejandro
Quintana wanted to pitch the drama. Some stage-pictures were
exactly that: heroic poses. Fortunately, they quickly dissolved,
but on such a small stage economy of action is everything. If it
seems a mixture of the natural and the stylized, there isn't room
for both. Still, it was a brave try. Considering the neighborhood,
_In the Jungle of the Cities_ might have been a Brecht script more
to the point. More relevant, at least. It's possible that the
suppressed premise in this production was the play's presumed
parallels with the conflicts in Nicaragua, with the Contras seen as
the fascists--supported this time, not by the Nazis, but by the
United States--and the Sananistas as Republicans. Current issues,
of course, are not so clearly classifiable. What a pity Brecht
didn't look East as well as West: he could have written another
drama-tract denouncing Stalin's show-trials and purges.
Glenn Loney
Brooklyn College, CUNY
PS: "Unhappy is the land that needs both heroes and playwrights!"
gl
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