Too bad that Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern Are Dead, did not play to larger audiences at the O’Keefe Centre. Toronto newspaper cri- tics were rather reserved. (The ‘Tribune might have been able to send a few more customers to the box office if our review tickets had not been delayed until the second week of the play’s run.) Too bad, because it is a fas- cinating entertainment excel- lently produced. The author has selected two of the minor characters of Shakespeare’s Hamlet — Rosen- crantz and Guildenstern, friends of the prince’s student days, two of the most unheroic, un- important and unintelligent stooges King Claudius could choose to spy on the vengeful son of the brother he had mur- dered. It is an uncanny play, as though you had gone to the Stratford. Festival to see Ham- let and did in fact see the young prince, and his mother Gertrude (who married her hus- band’s murderer) and the fra- tricidal king, and the unctuous is still By HORST HEITZENROETHER In a play “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Bertolt Brecht presents a gang of racketeers as a palpable allegory for the Hit- ler clique. To make sure, how- ever, that no one relegates the allegorical horror to the past, he concludes the play with the following epilogue “The womb is still fertile whence this crawl- ed.” Since the first performance of the play more than one dozen years have past. The quotation “The womb is still fertile’ has been used in the course of time, ever more frequently in conjunc- tion with the West German Re- public. In 1964, West German author Heinz Bruedigam had a book published in the Roeder- berg Verlag, Frankfort/Main which bears the title of the Brecht quotation and was the first documented collection of revi’ .d nazi and neo-nazi litera- ture in the Federal Republic. probably not be difficult to bring such a collection up to double its original size. A great deal is already said in the Federal Republic are nam- _ ed after a certain Agnes Miegel whose blood-and-soil style the nazis have been paying tribute to; those who used to praise her as the greatest German poetess. “Volk ohne Raum” (A Nation without Space) was the title of a book that was one of the most extensively used tools for Hit- me war preparations. The’ au- dian bovis om ecient ‘The womb fertile whence § } this crawled’ Now, four years later, it would ° by the fact that thirteen schools - Ruentteye view of Shakespeare old Polonius, and his unhappy daughter Ophelia, and the rest of them in the rotten state of Denmark — and then realized that all of these were merely incidental characters, real but somehow seen in a dream, and that the two nonentities (the nitwits, the fops who hardly knew their own identities) some- how were chosen to elaborate Hamlet's philosophy, his “to be or not to be” conflicts, his ef- forts to fathom the line between reality and illusion, between fate and choice, his toying with absurdity and logic, his teeter- ing between the flippant and the mortal. Stoppard’s is a worm’s eye view of Shakespeare’s drama. It somehow brings the Eliza- bethan players closer to our own time. It challenges us to debate, it stimulates our imagination, it inspires make-believe, it is con- sciously theatrical in the best tradition. Derek Goldby and Claude Chagrin, the directors, have given Shakespeare his due, shown his characters straight. They have observed the Shakes- peare poetry and recognized UuIlo | Stoppard’s. But their main in- terests are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are now the central figures and who, played by Brian Murray and George . Backman, are given virtuoso portrayals, rich in absurdist non-sequitors and pedantic pos- turing. But the low-down - street humor, the down-to-earth comic vulgarity, the crude posturing of the strolling players and their skeptical insights into the facts of life—these are most graphically brought to vividness by W. B. Brydon, leader of the actors’ troupe, and by his com- pany. It is they, owning nothing but their rags and their talent, who illuminate the world. Desmond Heeley’s set, which converts from outdoors to the solid castle interior to a ship at sea, is one of the most impres- sive seen here in years, and Richard Pilbrow’s lighting of the mime scenes bathes the ac- tion in excitement. And, finally, the style of the playing and the lucid, clean speech of the play- ers, make the production a rare delight. —Martin Stone me mre ieee ail cai = thor’s name was Hans Grimm who, only a few years after the war, was once again allowed to organize the annual writers’ meetings in the Lippoldsberg monastery. Ernst Frank, a_ prominent member of the defunct Sudeten- German nazi-party, nazi-scien- tist Herbert Cysarz, and former SA - Obersturmbannfuehrer: Dr. Jahn are the organizers and/or authors of the Heimreiter pub- lishing house which is publish- ing the “Sudetendeutsche Turner- briefe” (Sudeten-German Gym- nasts’ Letters) and the periodi- cal “Wegweiser fuer Heimat- vertriebene (Handbook for Ex- pellees) . Memoirs of generals and bom- ber pilots, who in a more or less artful manner are trying to justi- fy Hitler’s aggressive campaigns as wel as novels by authors who deny the nazi cruelties com- mitted in foreign countries and demand the restoration of the 1937 borders are not only spread by the neo-nazi press and sold by news-vendors, but have gra- dually penetrated into bookshops and book-exchange _ services. “Fight without Mercy,” “The Squadron of the Doomed” and similar titles are the rule. Inside the cover, the German soldier either triumphs over “inferior” nations or succumbs to them on account of unjust circumstances. Some 20 million of such trash are sold year after year. They are supplemented by James Bond paperbacks and similar rubbish which glorify brutality. A trifle more sophisticated, but no less dangerous in spread- ing racism, nationalist chauvin- ism and aggressive miiltarism is the “Buchkreis fuer Besinnung und Aufbau” (Book Circle for Contemplation and Reconstruc- tion) which was founded last year, Its brains are Professor Ernst Anrich, who is the author of “Volksgestaltung durch Fueh- rertum” (National Revival through Fuehrer-dom) and simi- lar books and, as official head, his wife Dorothea Anrich who engages authors to write on the “Meaning and Necessity of a Systematically - arranged Peo- ples’ Organism” or to extol the “Accomplishments of the Ger- man War Economy.” Official Bonn does not worry a great deal about literature and On the occasion of the recent announcement of “Pri Minister” William Andrew Cecil Bennett of British Colum on his plan to “annex” the Yukon and North West Terr ries and add these resources-rich subcontinents to the dom of “his” B.C., the following opus is dutifully dedicated. Also with the due apologies to the late Robert W. Servi poet-laureate of the Yukon, for having the temerity to co bine his “Shooting of Dan McGrew” and the “Cremation Sam McGee” all in one operation. In this however I am A bunch of Socreds were whooping it up in the Malamu tabernacle, The Kid that finagled the blacktop deals was embroiled } a lively cackle; | While down by the bar like a bright lode star, stood “Dynamic” WAC McPhew, Waving aloft his resources poke—and scheming to - anew. With a built-in smile turned on the beguile, he whirled hj poke like a wheel, And “Friends” says he, “and I don’t mean maybe, = to make you a deal; You all know me, and you know B.C., and its afluence genius has famed, j So if you'll pardon me, I’m here to see the Yukon ann to my claims”. There are strange things done ‘neath the Midnight where men toil and moil for gold, Where the worth of a man is not his gab, but his stas on the Golden Rule; Where Sourdough and Checako alike swap tales that wea curdle the blood of a few, But never a tale like the one just told by “Dynamic” W. McPhew. It is said that the Northern Lights went dim, as tho! Hyé had blown a fuse, And the howl of the Arctic wolf went still, as did the gha of the Lady named Lou; . And the dinosaur bones in the Klondyke creeks stir from their aeons of sleep, “By gawd” said all in a fitful voice, “this time we'll be for keeps”. ; Were you ever out in the Great Alone—while someot jumped your claim, And Monopoly’s rapist brood turned loose to ravish yor name and fame? Well that’s how it was on the fateful day when “Dynami WAC McPhew, : With his hunger—not of the belly kind, sought to grab @ the Yukon too. re Yet, as the Sourdoughs say, “while there’s life there’s hope and they should know the score, . Their proud River Queens (Time has turned to hulks) sailed to the Bering shore: : “Let’s haul one down to the marge of Lac Lebarge whe we cremated Sam McGee,” i And while the flames dance high in the arctic night—tut the heat on “Dynamic” McPhew. i The cremation of Sam brought home to him the heat of bo Tennessee, As will the roasting of monopoly’s fast-buck expert by tf : heat of the Yukon and NWT; “We've long been accustomed—it’s been our curse, those with a grab-and-run itch, But we'll be dammed if we’ll see the Yukon annexed b giveaway ... .” (Censored) gives free rein to these individu- als. Whenever official evalua- tions do occur they look like this: Last year the City of Mannheim awarded its greatly- respected “Schiller Prize” to Professor Carl Wurster, manag- er of the Badish Anilin und Sodafabriken. Under Hitler, the very same gentleman used to be Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer and be- longed to a group of industrial- ists who produced the deadly gas Cyclon B for concentration camps. The “Deutschland - Stiftung” (German Foundation), of which Federal Minister Strauss, several Land-Ministers and other high state dignitaries are members, has, since 1967, been a a “Konrad Adenauer” (10,000 marks). Two three 1967 prize-winner nazi-apologists Bernt von” ler who is anxious to cl ler of any guilt, and Armi ler who speaks of the co! tion camp victims as ‘ carcasses.” In 1968, the” went to Emil Franzel] wh?” wrote: ‘We have to hold sition into which. histo! placed us and in which the" rer wants us to be.” At P he writes for the neo-nazZi The womb whence this ed, therefore, is still fe’ name is “German Federal! lic.”