This Jungle of Cities is one of six shows presented under the banner of the UnConvention, an explicitly political festival of theatrical counter-programming to the Republican National Convention. As such, I expected something more obviously activist and more overtly responsive to the Bush administration's policies and programs; but this loose adaptation of an early Brecht work, written and directed by Berrian Eno-Van Fleet, is instead a cerebral tract on political science, economics, and sociology: an attack on the underlying attitudes that fuel present-day Republicanism, rather than on any particular manifestation of it.

If the foregoing sounds a little daunting, well, so is This Jungle of Cities. Its arresting opening scene takes place in a library, where librarian Viktor Nova is intimidated by a gang of thugs (think Mussolini's Black Shirts or Hitler's Brown Shirts) who throw books all around the room while demanding that Viktor "sell" them his "outrage." Viktor refuses; his defiance in the face of oppression feels heroic and pertinent.

But nothing's tidy in the universe of this play; eight subsequent scenes, unfolding in locales such as a hotel room, a rail yard, and Viktor's home, delineate the gradual breaking-down of humanity/civilization under an insidiously fascistic regime that eventually swallows up Viktor along with just about everybody else. The lone exception seems to be his sister, Maria, who ends the play with an anguished but possibly hollow cry for freedom. Unfortunately, specifics of what actually happens herein were a bit murky to me—actors (all of them women) are double- or triple-cast, so it was sometimes hard to tell who was who in a given scene; and the text is often pretty sketchy, requiring us to fill things in that aren't clearly stated. Further complicating matters is a timeline provided in the program that indicates a non-chronological progression (but this isn't communicated effectively during the play itself, which is problematic); the last scene takes place, we're told, on September 11. If the events in This Jungle of Cities are therefore meant to somehow presage the World Trade Center attack, I was unable to make that connection.

Nevertheless, the mood of the thing—overwhelmingly pessimistic—is starkly communicated. Eno-Van Fleet has a great director's eye, creating striking visuals with her actors and with the remarkable set, designed and created by the company, which consists of two steel towers and a lattice of steel shelves/cubby holes. The ensemble do fine work, with Megan Riordan as Maria and Amy Patrice Golden as Viktor particularly noteworthy.

Something less difficult and more direct than This Jungle of Cities might prove more effective in achieving the mission of the UnConvention of "spurring audiences to become more active citizens": this piece plumbs deep but offers little that's hopeful or actionable. That said, it's certainly an interesting work and it marks Eno-Van Fleet, whose writing debut this is, as an up-and-coming voice on the off-off-Broadway scene.

This Jungle of Cities reviewed September 4, 2004 by Nicholas Seeley

Like much of Bertolt Brecht's early work, In the Jungle of Cities is more poetic than plotted and as much mystical as political. A play that is sometimes set alongside Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Shakespeare's Macbeth as one of the classic explorations of human evil, Jungle chronicles a feud, sprung from incomprehensible motives, between a Chicago bookseller and a Malaysian lumber merchant. The language is dense, poetic, and evocative, frequently defying both reason and traditional narrative.

It is a brave theater company indeed that will sail into those muddy waters. But writer/director Berrian Eno Van-Fleet and The Management Company have done so, with a map of their own making.

This Jungle of Cities, written by Eno-Van Fleet, takes situations and ideas from Brecht's play and re-imagines them in contemporary settings, influenced by today's problems. The result (rather like the original) is a difficult show that demands a great deal of thought and attention from the audience, but pays it back with a number of interesting ideas and powerful moments.

Many of the best things about This Jungle of Cities are the performances. The actors have to dig deep into the bare-bones poetry of the text to find moments that are human, pathetic, and funny, but they do it.

The highlight may be Megan Riordan's performance as Maria Nova, the sister of bookseller Victor Nova, who gets drawn into her brother's feud with the merchant Zhi Tian. Riordan takes a role that could easily be fragmented and nonsensical, and fills it with a passion that makes us believe in her completely. Amy Patrice Golden, as Victor, and Courtney Sale as his girlfriend, Flora, do one of the best love scenes this reviewer has seen in a long time, and Jennifer Harder has some hilarious moments as Victor and Maria's mother, Malka.

Eno-Van Fleet's direction is also effective'she never talks down to the audience or hits us over the head with symbolism. She stages her play's brutal conflicts for what they are, and allows us to question them as we choose. While this kind of interrogation can be tough to keep up with, the show's short running time prevents it from outlasting the audience's interest.

Jungle's weak points are usually connected to the text. Eno-Van Fleet's re-imagination is, if anything, even less comprehensible than Brecht's play, and audience members not at least passingly familiar with the original may quickly become lost. And, while the new, modern version of the story focuses much more closely on the dynamics of power and ownership than its rambling source material, it loses a degree of depth and meaning in the process. The homoeroticism and masochism that form a major part of In the Jungle of Cities, for example, are completely lost in the re-imagination. The persistent updating of lines, themes, and elements makes the show resemble a sound-alike score for a Hollywood film.

The only time the show really disappoints, however, is at the very end. It seems, by the climax, as if cast, writer and director have all run out of energy for their ambitious experiment. Elements like scene changes, which throughout the show have been painstakingly executed, start to look sloppy. The staging of the last two scenes is bland and rushed, and the show's final moment, which is clearly supposed to be a tableau of beauty and horror, looks like a last-minute addition.

Still, Jungle provides plenty to engage an audience looking for an interesting and challenging work of theater.