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Comment by Mal Pope on September 3, 2009 at 21:34

Sounds really interesting. I spent a day with Larry Adler who was ionvloved in the MaCarthy witchhunts. Really interesting. 40 years later he still couldn't forgive Humphrey Bogart for selling out!

Comment by Peter Cox MBE on September 3, 2009 at 21:07

Hi Mal,
Not long finished a big beast of a stage play called The Question for Sphinx Theatre Company in London. Set between WW1 and the MaCarthy witch hunts in the USA it looks at artists, writers, composers etc during the rise of Hitler & Stalin. Main characters include Bertolt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich, Hitler, the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner who had 800 of his works destroyed by the Nazis and the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger who was declared public enemy number one by Hitler. On top of that (!) there a heavy influence of clowning in the performance style drawn from two German clowns of the time, Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt, who influenced Brecht and Chaplin. And is if that's not enough it also uses the extraordinarily powerful music of Hanns Eisler - (the composer that McCarthy's goons called 'The Karl Marx of Music') with the original song lyrics that Brecht wrote with him. Just awaiting production dates etc now.

Comment by Mal Pope on September 3, 2009 at 18:51

Hi Peter I hope all is well. It would be great to catch up soon. This tour doesn't go to Mid wales but we're already starting to talk to various parties about next year, across the UK but it would be good to include the rest of wales in that too. Hopefully see you somewhere along the way this November if not before. What are you workign on?

Comment by Peter Cox MBE on September 2, 2009 at 19:03

Hi Mal, haven't crossed paths for a while. Looking forward to seeing the show. Good luck and hope all goes well.