The latest volume in Methuen”s Collected Brecht includes two plays previously untranslated into English
Volume 8 of Brecht”s collected plays contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht”s ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Holderlin”s classic German translation of Sophocles” play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht”s most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht”s version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.