In the Jungle of Cities

In the Jungle of Cities luxuriates with bizarre effects that probably symbolize very little. Actors clang bells when they go on and off the set; scene changes are announced on a sign bordered with flashing yellow lights, and furniture is made out of boxes lettered with the words "love," "hate," "cat," and "die." Florid, epigrammatic dialogue matches the props, with lines like "Security is a pipe dream until the next ice age comes."

These esoteric oddities remind one that Brecht wrote this unusual play forty years ago, when he was in his early twenties. The young dramatist's Communism was as yet embryonic: The Chicago slums provide the location for his play, but only occasionally does he instruct his well-fed audience to "Look life straight in the eye." The play is less political and more metaphysical than maturer works like Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Because of this speculative emphasis, In the Jungle of Cities is not a dated period piece. The Theatre Company of Boston expertly stages the play as it was meant to be produced in the twenties, and the result is contemporary drama as entertaining and puzzling as Genet, Ionesco, or latter-day Brecht.

Brecht's foreword urges the viewer to "watch now the inexplicable wrestling match between two men . . . Don't worry about the reasons for this fight but make yourself share in the human stakes." The advice is well-taken, because the reasons for the struggle seem decidedly artificial from the start. Shlink a Chinese timber dealer, purposely provokes a fatal quarrel with George Garga, an employee in a moth-eaten lending library. When Garga refuses to sell his opinion of a book to Shlink and his three thugs, the Chinaman concludes that he is a man of spirit an man worthy of his enmity. Garga takes up the challenge to combat without knowing why: "The fight is on with no holds barred. If you have a reason I'm sure it's a rotten one. . . . .I understand nothing but I accept."

To Brecht, who had never been to this country, Chicago suggested a dissipated, Darwinian atmosphere retaining traces of the then-recent Wild West. It epitomized the ruthless urban machine that consumed the poor, trying their sensitivity and testing their capacity for suffering. Chicago also illustrated for the playwright the intense loneliness of the human condition: Conversations take on the futile quality of dual soliloquys.

When his contest with Garga is nearly over, Shlink realizes the extent of his solitude: "Man's infinite isolation makes even enmity an unattainable goal." He finds human existence too insular to allow even the satisfaction of hostility toward another person. As Garga tells Shlink when he quits their duel, "It's not important to be the stronger, but only the living."

Only ingenious ineptitude could spoil a part in an unorthodox piece like In the Jungle of Cities. Careful interpretation counts for little when the dramatist delights in scorning conventional standards of behavior. There is no ideal way to deliver an ironic line like, "My mouth is not full of fancy talk--only teeth." Still, the Theatre Company of Boston deserves applause for carefully avoding all "fancy talk." They play In the Jungle of Cities as literal Brecht, vintage of 1924, complete with staccato speeches and as consistent tragi-comic flippancy that fits the dialogue perfectly. Among a dozen fine performances, Penepole Laughton is outstanding as the delicate Mary Garga, who slips into prostitution after Shlink rebuffs her. Dan Morgan creates a fittingly inscrutable Shlink, and John Lasell acts as harried and erratic as a man in George Garga's situation ought to be. Vernon Blackman, Paul Benedict, and Dustin Hoffman are wonderfully snide and easy-going in the roles of Skinny, Worm, and Babson, Shlink's strongarm men.

Everything else about the production--the setting, the costuming, and the excellent entrescene score by Jean Prodromides--is either quaint or grotesque, but never bland. In this early play, his third, Brecht was already the brash, colorful, mystic iconoclast. All of his qualities are respected and encouraged in this successful production at the Hotel Bostonian Playhouse.