The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 24

THE GUARDIAN Thursday August 23 1990 East Germany's leading woman writer is under attack from critics in the West. Julian Roberts reports Crucifying Christa Poets dream up a little place in the country 24 ARTS the debate rages on letters pages and in earnest colloquia around the country. The point is simple. Christa Wolf, who is now over 60, did well under DDR patronage, GERMANS pride themselves on being "the people of thinkers and poets," and see nothing odd in naming streets and even cities after intellectuals. This reflects the view that great writers and artists transcend craftsmanship to become moral icons.

The problem is that when political circumstances change, yesterday's icon becomes today's bogey. Above a certain level, this hero-swapping has something rather charming about it (Karl Marx will not suffer from the reversion of Karl-Marx-Stadt to Chemnitz); but elsewhere, particularly for the living or recently dead, the periodic re-assessment can be a bad-tempered business. Last year, the discussion focused on Heidegger and his Not, surely, chatting about the RSC's future London base? HERE'S a chance for British Equity to show they're as right-on as their American peers. Alan Ayckbourn will next month begin directing Othello in Scarborough, with a good chance of a West End run in the New Year. (It's the perfect Cameron Mackintosh show: love, death, snappy lyrics, exotic skin colours Just one detail: the male lead will be played by Michael Gam-bon, a fine classical actor, but a man whose complexion is decidedly unblack.

"In these days of racial equality it would be a shame if someone was denied a role because of their colour," said the spokeswoman for the Stephen Joseph theatre-in-the-round. "We have cast him because we think he's the right man for the EVERY poet needs a mews house, or at least a Scottish croft. A cosy place in the country to escape to for the odd week's creativity, where the imagination can be refueled and lyrical gems can be weaved. And if you need the money to buy it, what better than to take to Billingsgate fish market at four in the morning? That is where you will find some of our leading poets on September 14, in a sponsored 24-hour "Poethon" to raise 25,000 to buy a Scottish retreat. Craig Raine, James Fenton, and she realises that the young men watching her from cars outside her flat are really only sent to intimidate.

The central question of the story is what remains of personal identity in a city which seems to have been gripped by a strange depersonalising despair? The nodal points are the narrator's privileged and comfortable existence in an elegant pre-war flat in the centre of Berlin; the monstrous passport control building outside Friedrichs-strasse station, representing, for her, all that is unprincipled and morally bankrupt "the ruthless pursuit of momentary and the young writers who seek her out, desperate for her assistance in somehow escaping the system. The story is a confession of the collapse, not of moral or political integrity, but of personal identity. The narrator reflects on Brecht who had what she describes as "belief in unbelief, an essentially amoral but robust readiness to divide the world into positives and negatives, the truth and the lie. "But behind him the with money and the freedom to travel abroad. She was a member of the party (though she resigned shortly before the regime collapsed), and allowed herself to be feted publicly by the communists.

She was close to the party leadership (for example, when her daughter was arrested in the demonstrations last autumn she was able immediately to phone Honecker). She did not stand up against the harassment and expulsion of fellow-writers who offended the regime (for example, after The political tables have turned and the beneficiaries of socialist patronage are coming under scrutiny the notorious 1979 Writers' Union Congress). She gave an endorsement to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Now, however, she has published an autobiographical short story describing an episode in 1979 when she was shadowed by the Stasi. The reproach against her is that although publication in 1979 would have been an act of heroic resistance, in 1990 it is a cheap attempt to represent herself as the victim of a system of which she was the beneficiary.

For those defending Christa Wolf, the difficulty is that she clearly did benefit from association with a regime which was morally unsupportable. It built a wall to keep discontented citizens from leaving; some 200 were shot dead trying to escape; it made financial welfare dependent on political conformity; and this latter oppression was a major aspect of life as a writer or artist. For a writer who became unacceptable to the regime, the only options were to fall silent or, voluntarily or involuntarily, to leave the country. Christa Wolf knew all this, it is said, and yet she did not dissociate herself from it, and neither did she help those who were trying to change things. What Remains is a story about this whole situation.

In it, Christa Wolf does not try to represent herself as a martyr, are re-emerging in the controversy over her latest book Liz Lochhead, Wendy Cope and Andrew Motin will be among 144 poets taKmg their art to the masses at 10 London locations, from a barge departing Little Venice to the Whispering Gal lery of St Paul's. They will be joined by a well- heeled collection of barristers, bankers, film-makers and mediafolk, all of whom have pledged to learn 10 minutes of verse to deliver to an unsuspecting public. With the money, the Moniack Trust will buy a croft eight miles from Inverness to bring established authors and poets together with aspiring writers for week-long residential courses. Twenty-thousand people have passed through two similar centres in England over the last two decades. If the "Poethon" is successful, the Scottish building will open in 1992.

"It's the Live Aid of poetry," says organiser Sophia Fraser, keen to impress that the event will assemble "the thinking woman's crumpet all together in the same WITH no replacement yet announced for Jonathan Miller, the Old Vic's departing artistic director, the rumour machine has moved into fourth gear. Comings and goings recently logged by our eagle-eyed cub reporters: Kenneth Branagh, flying down to London (twice) for chats with owner Ed Mirvish; and wasn't that Michael Pennington, presumably looking to house his roving English Shakespeare Company? Goodness, an other visitor bearing a remarkable resemblance to Adrian Noble, the man helping reduce the Barbican's electricity bill this season. political, such "political" elements cannot (usually) be identified by the insignia of sectarian gangs. On the other hand, of course, artists do also live a moral and political identity. As a citizen, it speaks for indiscretion, at least, that Christa Wolf allowed herself to be used by the regime.

And it is as a citizen, inevitably, that she will now bear the consequences. Not that the consequences will be that serious in her case: the old regime's patronage of Christa Wolf pales into insignificance beside her international success. For others, though, the institutional changes will be more painful. An all-German PEN club is now likely to be constituted, and the various DDR "academies" may also be absorbed into western counterparts. Those who were prominent in administering the DDR's repressive cultural policies, like novelist and writers' union President Hermann Kant, are unlikely to be admitted to bodies where they would encounter their former victims, now residents of the West.

That seems just. Increasingly, though, observers feel that such negative consequences should not be out of proportion to any institutional and material benefits the writers gained from performing the regime's dirty work. Without a distinction between civic and artistic questions you get, at best, a continued censorship with the polarities changed, and, at worst, a witch hunt. This is already surfacing in blanket dismissals of DDR work as "totalitarian." Even Der Spiegel described one such anatlie-matisation (the banning of a DDR artist by a Cologne museum) as "honourably radical." Such "radicalism," however, revives painful memories of personal political vetting, which since the war has included both "denazification" and the "Berufsaverbot" proceedings of the seventies. At a popular level, it expresses itself in things like the defacement of Brecht's grave in East Berlin.

This is a radicalism many critics would rather do without: it already has too long a history in Germany. Barry Still on Worcester's Choirs Festival Public members and private bills Christa Wolf old wounds departed together with language: "A history of bad conscience, I thought, should be incorporated into reflection on the frontiers of the sayable; with what words does one describe the languagelessness of those without conscience What remains is no exculpation, or attempt by a compromised author to represent herself as a victim. The repproaches that can be made against Christa Wolf her timidity, her wish to be nice to everyone, even, in a certain sense, her lack of principles are all themes in the story itself. SOME critics have suggested that this kind of "inner emigration" is in itself reprehensible. In terms of Wolfs duties as a citizen and morally responsible person it probably is, though, as others have argued, this is scarcely an interesting reproach in the immediate context of literature.

Such distinctions may offend the purist. But even if, with Brecht, one does regard all art as in some sense Pesek inspired tic, but this was not just an exercise in calculated excellence. Because he displayed such revelatory insight, one was forced to listen with fresh ears, admiring at the same time his formidable power and delicacy, his keyboard touch in turn fiery and caressing, and these qualities were maintained to the triumphant end.A happy partnership with the RLPO under Hereford's Roy Massey. Massey also conducted Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, warming to the occasion to recapture much of the patriotic fervour and emotionalism. The Festival Chorus grew in assurance after early disagreements with the orchestra, which itself continued its vivid response, cor anglais and bass clarinet to the fore.

The whole performance was eloquently validated by Linda Strachan's beautiful singing in the plangent lamentation at the battlefield. Choral journey relations with the Nazis. This year, the political tables have turned and the beneficiaries of socialist patronage are coming under scrutiny. The current de bate centres on the prominent DDR novelist Christa Wolf. In June she published a novella (What Remains) which turned out to be the opening shot in a controversy that had been wait ing to start all year, and which is now spreading rapidly.

Since November's "revolution" the West German press has been raking over the ashes of the DDR with gusto. It started with Stasi operatives and other regime thugs, worked its way up through op portunistic lawyers and doc tors, and has now arrived at the most sensitive area of all the intellectuals. There are old wounds and resentments here: the contempt for the capitalist west shown by so many intellectual celebrities (Bert Brecht, Hemnch Mann, Ernst Bloch and others) who after the war chose the DDR; the persistent respect accorded to DDR writers by the West; the long left-wing cultural hegemony even in the Federal Republic. The attacks on Christa Wolf and her novella have come mainly from the right-wing (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zei-tung) and centrist (Die Zeit) papers. She has been stoutly defended by the more leftist Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Der Spie gel, which has been running its own inspection of the DDR intellecutal elite (stiff interrogations of Ruth Berghaus, Hermann Kant, Heiner Muller; dark allegations even against the Gewandhausorchester's Kurt Masur), has sat on the fence over Wolf, though it has published defensive comments by Gunter Grass. Meanwhile, NATIONAL mmnninm mm dmiwrn 1 gs oBmiDil'lBO OOP 'iftoiifTit 0 IANO new play by Trevor Griffiths A cast to a delicious Tomorrow Mon at 7.30pm, Sat Tue at 2.30 and 7.30pm BOX office! I nXSTCALL 1 AS? I WEEK Kjnp MP ii role. Gambon will not, at least, be blacking up, but will be playing the Moor "as an A Gulf-states tour, presumably, is not on the cards. DAVID Lynch on the meaning of films such as Blue Velvet or Eraser-head: "I'm of the Western Union school. If you want to send a message, go to Western Union If you start worrying right away about the meaning of everything, chances are your poor intellect is only going to glean like a little portion of it." BUT Twin Peaks, Lynch's smash-hit television drama, has had a profound meaning for the American networks.

It has persuaded them that shows do not need to be dull and bland to attract audiences which please advertisers. They are now actively searching for innovative programmes, which dare to turn their backs on the mass audience with hard-hitting social messages. The word is that the national networks are looking for riskier, more socially critical series. Even Aaron Spelling, who was behind Dallas and Little House On The Prairie, is considering a tough gangland drama set in the seedier parts of East Los Angeles. Which can only bring hope for the imports we are fed over the next few years.

"It's like the crumbling of the walls in Eastern Europe out there," one programming executive told Variety last week. "Exploring a grittier, a less comfortable, or a more topsyturvy world is definitely in." was Jock Skinner, manager of Lloyds Bank in Oxford. Contrary to the received wisdom about bank managers, Jock was firm but sympathetic, taking all the Walkers' bad news with composure, offering help and suggesting a list of sensible measures to recover the situation. This was brilliant publicity for the bank, and Mr Skinner must surely be in line for a big promotion. SPONSORED Br TOuwtT aoA.no AlPLAfMKA r.i.:,i,..

issoaatw wrtft The London Actors Company SADLER'S WELLS Friday 31 August 7.30pm Saturday I September 7.30pm Box Offices 071-278 8916 HANK TOO Mikuin aw osssr -Ji Ansindtrtteruirvrwnts m.KiH preterm liJ FROM SHI LANKA IlJ jungle closes again, and before us the abyss opens. The opportunistic cunning with which (in Brecht's play) Galileo rescues his "truth" cannot help those who no longer believe at all; and meanwhile "something in us lied and curtseyed and vituperated and slandered, and there was a thirst for submission and The empty and pointless exis tence of the Stasi operatives matches like a zip fastener the barren activities of their target. A girl dissident brings her writings, hopelessly subversive by the censor's stan dards. The narrator recognises they are good, and says so, but lets the girl leave without taking her address or offering support. "She must do what she has to do, and leave us to our conscience." In the evening she gives a reading; at the end, she discovers that young people trying to gain admission after the hall was full were brutally dis persed by police who arrested many, "without provocation She drives home without pro testing: i could do no more.

Made harmless, it's called. With one's back to the wall." Who has made her harmless? Not just the Stasi, it seems. Nor even her own accommodations, her shameful need to get on with all manner of It stems from a loss of the binary certainties of conscience, of the divisions which Brecht and Luther had found so easy. The horror is that conscience has It was a joy to hear the crisply-articulated playing of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the stirring work of the Festival Chorus and the outstanding ensemble of the solo team, where Helen Field, Alison Pearce, Sally Burgess, Neil Jenkins and Alan Opie were most prominent. Sunday evening took us into Italian byways.

Petrassi's 1939 Magnificat, an extended setting which overstates its case without redeeming the hotch-potch of styles, takes a lot of effort to bring conviction. The RLPO seemed overweight for the chorus, the latter hesitant in an unfamiliar work, and despite Miss Field's long-breathed lyrical statements and the persuasive direction of Gloucester's John Sanders, the inventive instrumentation and vocal complexities (a daunting fugue at Sicut locutus) were not enough. On Monday a Russian concert included a double first, the premiere of Tchaikovsky's flat Piano Concerto at the Three Choirs and the concerto debut in the UK of another young star from Moscow, Boris Beresovsky, just into his twenties. The controlled intensity and intense control in his playing led to astounding clar ity, even In the cathedral acous- sprang from Annie Whitehead's taut, percussive trombone, Evan Parker's atonal ferocity on tenor, Ray Warleigh's more orthodox but beautifully composed alto, and Paul Roges' stormy, imperious bass. Barbadian trumpeter Harry Beckett's band then silenced a volatile crowd with inimitably skittish, song-like variations pitched against muscular accompaniment from pianist Alastair Gavin and a furiously active drummer, Mark Saunders, out of the Roach- ssm Jones-Jell watts line.

Pukwana's own townships-flavoured band Zila appeared, memorably including rich acappella work from vocalist Pimse Saul. Louis Moholo, the only original member of Blue Notes, closed the show with a blistering ensemble including the ferocious barn-door tenorist Sean Bergin, an uncommonly loose, open Steve Williamson and a fast, precise Claud Deppa on trumpet. It was all loud and emotional enough for Pukwana to hear wherever he is. Adam Sweeting THERE'S already been a lot of talk about Sex Talk (C4). In the first programme, Climax Or Anticlimax, a group of men and women sat around talking about orgasms, sex and masturbation.

"I think masturbation is essential for a young male," said one. It didn't seem to have done him any harm, since he displayed model-ish good looks and crinkly designer hair. One of the other men had noticed at an early age that "if you rub your willie long enough, something very pleasant happens." Just like Aladdin's Lamp. A quick polish, and you've won the pools. The chairperson, Mark Chase, refereed all this with an air of annoying superiority.

What did the panel think about vaginal or clitoral orgasms, he wondered. And by the way, did anybody use sex aids? Oddly, the team were so keen to talk about themselves that nobody did the obvious, and slipped embarrassing questions to the quizmaster. Ah, but we weren't supposed to be embarrassed, were we? iMaiiciiiinJi to give up her job, they would never have have been caught in the spiral of debt which threatened to wreck their marriage and their lives. Tom Mannion and Lesley Sharp played the skint couple, but everybody else in the film was enacting their real-life role, from bailiff Jacqui Hurd to Frank Lynn at the Alliance Leicester. Tony had not proved to be a smarter investor, and his new loan application was turned down.

Mr Lynn knew before the interview started that the answer was a big NO, but this didn't prevent him from playing Tony along. We've heard of "the banality of but this was the drab- ness of debt. The Walkers were hemmed in by an advancing cordon of bailiffs and debt-collectors, all performing their tasks with a dull routineness. It wasn't hard to imagine one of these flat, emotionless voices announcing that if the money was not repaid within 10 minutes, the Walkers would be taken out and shot. Mannion was terrific as Tony, flustered and mumbling down the phone to the man from Barclaycard, hanging up guiltily to prevent his young son from overhearing, and creeping back into his own home to hide the latest batch of bills.

Man of the match, though. MCPPftnts--y SftTTSi ASTON VILLA LEISURE CENTRE SATURDAY 22nd SEPTEMBER 7 30 pm Watt: OM. MUM front BO Tel: 021-321 5377 TeiiiuM Racoftft NMiftiuhMi, MM WulMitiiiiipton. Fnt Ftac Coventry tttyact to booting Ml. OXFORD APOLLO SUNOAYSrd SEPTEMBER 7.30 pm UcMr.

tt (MO. ftnttb tram BO MRWWW (CmllCiidiAajMlMdiaiwaljwti. CARDIFF ST. DAVID'S HALL TUESDAY2Sth8EPTEMBER7J0pm CdAppMkmTA0222NetduutJ9iiiti. SOUTHAMPTON MAYFLOWER iuu aa aw.

auum (mm tto musm (CrtoK Cank AccM), Too HonmtiM Cmtn. Abw am tl tarnl tmttt. NOT11MOHAM ROYAL CONCERT HALL THURSDAY 27th SEPTEMBER 8.00 pm Tictttt: gag. OOOl AiiUhti new Bit) Tel: OtUMCOl We were consenting adults, facing facts. But it won't have escaped Michael Grade's eagle eye that a lot of people are going to watch out of prurience.

They might tune in for a good laugh, but they'd be absolutely accurate to consider the panel a bunch of wankers. For all the supposed freeness and frankness, a predictable divide emerged between the women and the men. The women were certain that they took sex more seriously, while the men were "schoolboyish" about it. Women could not imagine themselves indulging in "wanking which of course men do all the time. There was a suspicion that sex was generally for men's benefit, with the women under pressure to But there is something rampantly exhibitionist about discussing your sexual habits on TV.

The studio format, with its kitsch backdrop of statuary, tried to imply an urge towards some high classical ideal, but the orgasmic panting and grunting which accompanied the commercial break captions had irresistible overtones of Debbie Does Dallas. Sex lay at the root of the problems experienced by Tony and Sue Walker in Not Waving But Drowning (ITV). If they hadn't had an unplanned second child, which forced Sue fW4 PRESTON GUILDHALL SATUMMV 1 Sth SB7BH8ER 7J0 pm TktaM; tt AwltMe Irnm B0 0772-HBH NEWCASTLE CrrV HALL IktaO: O.M. OM. Avaktenom BO NMtl tM (CrttrtCafdiMafXMj.

CARLISLE SANDS CENTRE TUESDAY 1tlh SEPTEMBER 7.30 pm Aetata: 0 fobbfe from BO OBMHS ICradRCard Boot MANCHESTER APOLLO WEDNESDAY 19m SEPTEMBER 7 JO pm IkMK OM. AntoM (ran BO Tel: Mt J7J JJ7S miniwMwnHnHg la Aetataed) and (TTMNK). LIVERPOOL EMPIRE FRDAY21itSEPTEMBER7J0pni am OM. AwMb torn 80 Tel: C6t70l IBS (BMRGHAfftxamra: mm mm FOR the 263rd Three Choirs Festival, Worcester organist, Donald Hunt, has opted to focus attention, at most major concerts, on one individual country. To do this successiully while present ing the continuing vigour and catholicity of the English choral tradition will be a considerable achievement.

We began in Austria, with Mahler's mighty Eighth Symphony, directed by an inspired and inspiring Libor Pesek, reaching a performance level certain to be hard to match. Pesek's forthright manner, without tads or trills, yet with consummate involvement, and founded on a deep understanding of the score, ensured the potency of the orchestral textures and the work's essential symphonic nature, for all its literary and philosophical basis. His juxtaposition of the contemplative and ecstatic was especially striking such as the opening to Part Two or the incandescent pages introduced by Accende lumen in Part One. Vital to an effective and con vincing reading are discipline among the vast instrumental troops and balance with and within the choral and solo bodies, and here he was splendidly served. 100 Club John Fordham Dudu Pukwana Memorial THE late, great, South African jazz musician Dudu Pukwana's memorial concert brought friends, fellow Africans and distant admirers to the 100 Club last Monday for an exuberant, chaotic celebration of a life de voted to music.

Pukwana's explosive and irrepressible presence was everywhere, with musicians who loved him knocking themselves out to pay him a tribute he would understand. The graceful, buoyant drum mer, John Stevens, and his iband began with a vigorous style encompassing most ot the different schools of jazz that Pukwana himself mined. The themes were boppish but a swarm of contemporary ideas SAIBmMSmiElLlifl i-n--.