Originally based on a novel by Gorsky, the play is set in Russia during the throws of revolution. We follow the 'motherly' character of Pelagea Vlasova as she becommes entwined with her son's political movements in the hopes of liberating the working class. Against the turmoil of Russia's troubled nation, the play prevokes a political awakening in both the audience and the character of Pelagea Vlasova herself. This has to be one of Brecht's most 'Brechtian' works. Strongly in the style of Alexander Solzhnenitsyn, not only is it an excellent read, but it also strongly underlines Brecht's political views against the shadow of the repressed proletariate. His many unique styles of theatre are woven into the highly controversial text, with examples of his 'verfremdungsteffekt' methods shining through the script. This play is a must for any Brecht followers, and will also appeal to anyone interested in the Marxist movement and it's political ideas and concepts. The play is simply brilliant for those of us who want to read something that actually makes us stop and think. It is a piece of literature that has the benifit of being entertaining as well as educating, a tricky combination to master. Written with Brecht's usual flair for the ironic, the play will move you steadily through a rainbow of emmotions until at last we come to a climatic conclusion; not so much in atmosphere, as in ideas.

One has to know and understand the original German text of the Dreigroschenoper to be really able to judge the quality of the English translations. This one, used among others by Helen Schneider on her album with Weill songs, has nothing of the sarcasms of the German lyrics. Better read the 1954 translation of Marc Blitzstein or the translation made by Frank McGuinness in the early 1990s.

Of all the translations on the market, this one is the best -- most are watered-down, tepid versions. Manheim & Willet's was used in the late 1970's revival of the piece by the New York Shakespeare Festival, which starred the late Raul Julia and Ellen Greene (of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame, in the role originally intended for Lotte Lenya).

Anybody who would recommend this as a history book is completely unaware of the true history. Brecht may have been using dramatic license or he may have had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church. Either way, this is NOT an accurate historical account. Any person who would suggest it as such is guilty of what Brecht and revisionists accuse the Church of doing: suppressing the truth to further their personal agenda.

So maybe it's not completely accurate. I just read this book for a class I have to take. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It wasn't the dry, boring piece of literature I had expected. It's really a book to read - maybe not multiple times, but at least once. It has an important message, and is presented in a reasonably interesting way.

Bertolt Brecht, Galileo (Grove Press, 1952)

Publishers who put out "literature" (perhaps I should capitalize the L) have felt it necessary for the past half-century or so to include long-winded dissections of the texts as a part of their editions. No mind is paid, seemingly, to whether these long-winded dissections contain major plot spoilers (they almost always do). Add Eric Bentley's interminable preface to the Grove Press edition of Brecht's Galileo to the list. Perhaps Grove assumes anyone reading the thing will either have already read the play or will be so turned off by Belntley's wooden prose style that they won't read far enough to get to the spoilers. My advice: go the second route. And book publishers, if you're putting essays in your editions, PLEASE put them AFTER the actual text, so the novice reader of a given work will be able to approach it without the coloring of another reader's analysis.

Bentley spends forty-odd pages discussing the historical inaccuracies of Brecht's Galileo and the two extant versions of the text (though Bentley says both are presented in the Grive edition, this is not the case; from his comments, I gather this is the second version of the play, completed after WW2 [the first was completed in 1937]). Bentley goes on forever about the socialist qualities of Galileo, and whether the scientist makes a worthy Marxist hero, both in the reader's eyes and in Brecht's. Whether anyone outside those writing a paper for a Marxist lit class would care doesn't seem to have crossed his mind. Brecht is one of the few authors who is capable of taking a political statement and couching it in such writing as to make the statement itself visible only to those looking for it; Galileo's Marxism, or lack of same, doesn't hit the reader in the face with a dead herring (or a dropped pebble, as 'twere) throughout the text. Commendable, especially for as fervent a Marxist as was Brecht. Here is a man who never let the message overtake the medium, and scads of modern authors could do with repeated readings of this text to get a handle on what it is they're doing wrong.

Bentley aside, the play itself is certainly worth the reader's time. Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions. ** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)

I am peruvian and I read the book in Spanish, thanks to a friend who bought it in Buenos Aires.
I am a Bertolt Brecht's researching friend. This is the way I considered him: like a living one working for the theater.
I found the book nearly excellent...but too much condescending at the "human valorization" of our beloved friend. Ewen looks throught his appreciations too much "innocent" in that respect.
And I have a big question. Ewen says that Brecht "got a Medicin degree".
I do not know if this are translation problems but it is the first time (and I search about living Brecht since 1968)I heard about it....

This play is Brecht's adaptation of Marlowe's Edward II. I suspect this play will be surprising to most readers of Brecht because it contains considerably less of the overt social satire and commentary associated usually with Brecht. More than anything else, this play is a character of study of Edward's refusal to heed social conventions. This play is surprisingly successful, at least when read. Brecht elevates Edward's wilfullness into a virtue and makes him a surprisingly sympathetic character. The play displays Brecht's wit and stagecraft quite well.

This book is a compendium of America's neuroses, from its puritanism through its hatred for anything smacking of socialism all the way to its feminist-inspired guilt feelings towards women. These neuroses are then projected on Germany, leading to countless misunderstandings concerning the nature of German history and life. As an account of Bertolt Brecht and the world in which he operated this book is all but worthless. If you want to understand how crazy Americans really are, however, by all means go ahead and study it as carefully as you can.

I don't quite understand the previous reviewer's comments.
This book is a very good introduction from a technical point of
view. It surveys the career of Brecht as a stage director. This aspect of Brechtian studies in the Anglo-American circle is lacking. Carl Weber and John Rouse are leading scholars on this topic, but you have to dig hard and deep to find their articles.
If anything, the detailed record on the production of the Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Berliner Ensemble which forms the core of chapter six is an absolute keeper. It details how Brecht directed this play himself. What kind of things he was looking for? What to focus on? What to work on? How? It's invaluable but it's ignored again and again by college teachers who try to piece together theorectical expressions from defferent periods in Brecht's career. I say none of this nonesense; instead, study chapter six, if your German is not good enough and then you will get a handle on Brecht.
The rest of the book is a little chaotic, and his writing is a bit imprecise sometimes. People familiar with Eric Bentley's or Martin Esslin's books will recognize that the lack of political consciouness does not start with Fuegi. Fuegi really has some contributions to the study of the theatricality in Brecht by focusing upon the so-called "theatre" side.
What fouls Fuegi's reputations as a scholar and a biographer is his notorious biography published later. That volume is now deservedly out of print.

This is a terribly bad book. It is full of factually incorrect assertions woven together into a distorted picture of the most influential and complex theater worker of the twentieth century. There is a total absence of critical perception or analysis, and for someone who claims to have been working so long in the field, Fuegi betrays a remarkable lack of insight into the dynamics of theater production. He pays lip-service to what he seems to believe are feminist principles, but underneath them, he shows great disregard for the opinions and achievements of the remarkable women who worked with Brecht throughout his life. Fuegi seems to have learned nothing from Brecht;his writing is plodding and turgid - all the more so in the context of Brecht's own sharpness and economy of language. Any other book on Brecht would provide a better introduction; I have only given it one star because I can't figure out how to give it less

Brecht's achievements and influences as a pioneering modernist dramatist are inarguable. What needed to be added to the record was that the man was something of a literary sociopath whose reputation has been greatly inflated by his aggressive gift for self-promotion at the expense of others. Fuegi's documentation of his creepily Manson-like manipulation of talented but insecure women into a harem of love slaves and uncredited collaborators is long overdue.