Brecht’s 1940 Folk Play Has Sobering Relevance Today

For Charlie Chaplin and Bertolt Brecht, liquor could serve as a positive potion for the pompous. Chaplin’s classic film “City Lights” and Brecht’s rarely produced play “Puntila and Matti,” which opens Saturday at the Odyssey Theatre, share an unusual plot twist. In each, a wealthy man finds his humanity while drunk, only to lose it again when he regains his sobriety.

Chaplin, whose Little Tramp is befriended by a drunken millionaire who discards him the next morning, used the situation mainly to comic effect. Brecht, the author of such enduring works as “The Threepenny Opera” and “Mother Courage,” gave his tale a more overtly political spin.

In Brecht’s 1940 “folk play” (which he freely adapted from a Finnish comedy), Puntila, a wealthy landowner, sneers at his servants while sober. When drunk, however, he acts humanely to everyone around him--particularly his chauffeur, Matti, who views his employer’s changeable personality with increasing dismay.

Brecht’s man of wealth is forced to quash his natural impulses--including generosity and kindness--because of obligations he has assumed as a member of a capitalist society’s ruling elite. In a different world, the playwright implies, Puntila would be different.

“Brecht sets up a club that this man belongs to,” said director Tony Abetemarco, whose work at a variety of local theaters has received considerable critical acclaim. “They monitor his activities and let him know when he is stepping outside the rules.

“The lawyer, the parson and the judge are the voices of the club that this man, the moneyed landowner, has to pay homage to,” Abetemarco noted. When, in his drunken state, Puntila considers “the thoughts and feelings of the working people, he is stepping out of line. And that’s made clear to him.”

With socialism on the decline around the world, this leftist viewpoint may seem anachronistic to some. But Abetemarco believes that the play is relevant to modern-day Los Angeles.

“I think we live in a delusion, thinking we don’t have a class system,” he said, adding that he believes that last spring’s unrest “was largely a class issue. There were people of all different colors burning and looting, and a lot of them were poor.”

Added Tom McCleister, who plays Matti: “The middle class is becoming an endangered species. This play may be more relevant than ever.”

Besides, Abetemarco said, the play is not simply a tale of the haves and the have-nots.

“It’s a very rich story about human relations, including the class theme but not limited to it,” he said. “I have a personal, visceral connection to the story. It reminds me of my relationship to my father. I see reflected in the relationship between Puntila and Matti our family’s dynamics, and how they shaped me.”

Gene Dynarski plays Puntila. “When you first read the play, you see that black-and-white split between master and servant,” he said. “The more you read it and examine the fine points, it just gets more complex. That’s true of any great playwright, like Chekhov. The characters are so complicated, the fabric is so rich.”

“There’s layer after layer of things for an actor to explore in these characters,” Abetemarco agreed. “You never come out the other side with Brecht.”

Abetemarco was introduced to “Puntila and Matti” 12 years ago, after he staged a production of Brecht’s “Schweyk and the Second World War” at the Accident Theatre. “It was the first Brecht I ever directed,” he recalled. “We could only seat 29 people, and had 19 actors in the cast.

“At that time, Rene and Judith Auberjonois came to see it. Rene said to me, ‘You should look at Puntila.’ He had done it, I guess, in college. I did look at it and I loved it. From that time on, I kept it in my back pocket and mentioned it to producers from time to time.”

The response was usually less than enthusiastic. Many potential producers were put off by the size of the cast; Abetemarco is using 15 actors to play the 20 parts. It was Odyssey Artistic Director Ron Sossi, a Brecht aficionado, who finally gave him the go-ahead.

He also provided a powerful Puntila in Dynarski, who portrayed Josef Stalin memorably in the theater’s award-winning 1987 production of “Master Class.” Dynarski and Sossi were looking for the right role for the actor’s return to the Odyssey, and Puntila was perfect.

Dynarski, a veteran of Los Angeles theater, said Puntila is a very different character from Stalin, although, he noted, both men rose from poverty to positions of authority.

“I don’t think Puntila is ruthless,” he said. “He thinks he has to be at times, but it’s something he retreats from regularly. His sense of responsibility gives him a headache. He has to drink to get rid of it.

“He makes idle threats,” Dynarski added. “Stalin didn’t make idle threats.”

Music plays an important role in “Puntila and Matti,” just as it did in “Master Class.” There is a song at the end of each of the 11 scenes, in which a character comments on the action.

Abetemarco found the original score by Paul Dessau “plodding and unlistenable.” So he commissioned a new one by actor and composer Sam Anderson, which “has a slightly Slavic, folksy kind of feel to it, with some unconventional instrumentation.”

He described the physical production as “a lot of artifice on a low budget.

“I love working on the theatricality of it,” he said. “The idea of being able to create this entire world--a very multidimensional world--with a great group of actors is very exciting to me.”

Abetemarco said that he feels sympathy for both characters--as well as admiration for Brecht, whose words continue to resonate in his mind long after he leaves the theater.

“Each day that we work on this play, I come away from it thinking about how I deal with people on the street, and how I deal with people I work with,” he said. “I see myself in both these characters.”

“Puntila and Matti” plays at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays through May 2, with 3 p.m. matinees April 4 and 18, at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Tickets are $17.50 to $21.50. Call (310) 477-2055.