Brecht, Streep and Marx convey strong
message

BY ED FELIEN

"Theater of War" begins a one-week run at the Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak Street SE, on Sept. 18. It's a documentary about a production of Bertolt Brecht’s "Mother Courage" by NY Public Theater. Meryl Streep is Mother Courage. She'll probably get the Academy Award for her performance as Julia Child in "Julie and Julia." She should. But that was easy.

Everyone loves Julia Child, and Streep can channel her just this side of parody and make you fall in love with butter all over again. But her work as Mother Courage is really more profound and much more difficult. The movie is a documentary of rehearsals for the production, but it's also a condensed and important biography of Brecht and a primer on Marxism. There's a great scene of Brecht before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1946, but it doesn't have the one exchange that marked Brecht's sly and condescending manner before the Committee.

The Committee Chair asked Brecht if he wrote the poem "How to be a good Communist." Brecht answered, "No. I wrote a poem like that in German." He acted like he was cooperating while he was pitching them curve balls steeped in irony. Kevin Kline plays The Cook and is wonderful, but Streep's performance is not to be missed. Friday, Sept. 18, through Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7:15 p.m.