ABSTRACT
Late in the autumn of 1955, George Devine crossed the policed border which separated the 'ghastly glitter' of West Berlin from the 'vast sadness' of the Eastern sector to see what he could make of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. Bertolt Brecht came to a matinée of King Lear at the Hebbel Theatre and Devine seized the chance to ask his permission to stage the first London production of The Good Person of Setzuan at the Royal Court in 1956. The way in which Beaumont and Brecht labelled themselves reflect class choices, one up, one down, which stayed with them until the ends of their lives. They might have chosen differently if the outcome of the First World War had favoured Germany rather than Britain. The traditional language of the German theatre was more sharply class-inflected even than the British. High German was spoken by tragic heroes and the rustic style, Low German, by clowns.
