Overview

For the Wedekind renaissance of the 21st century Eric Bentley has re-arranged the material and added to it. The piece consists of two cabaret programs which could be performed together in one long evening or separately. The first program is framed by two Bentley ballads telling the stories of Spring's Awakening and The First Lulu, respectively. Within that frame is a varied series of Wedekind songs and spoken poems. The second program is framed by two Wedekind short stories, neither of them ever before presented on an American (or any other) stage. Within this second frame come poems and songs in which we meet another Wedekind, a wild poet who also had a tender, even elegiac side. The two-part show ends with a song by Eric Bentley and Arnold Black which celebrates, not Wedekind the rebel, but Wedekind the artist.

Eric Bentley has busied himself with Wedekind's work ever since the 1940's. In the 1950's he translated Spring's Awakening in collaboration with Wedekind's daughter, Kadidja. In the 1990's he did the American version of The First Lulu, Wedekind's other masterpiece. The Applause Books edition of the latter play contains a chronology that ends with this item, "1993: Eric Bentley writes the Wedekind Cabaret, an entertainment made up of approximations in English of Wedekind's poems and songs. Music by William Bolcom and Arnold Black."

Keywords

• Theatre/Entertainment Industry