Drums in the Night

April 7, 1978
StageBeat - Los Angeles Times
Brecht's 'Drums' at the Hyperion
The setting of Brecht's "Drums in the Night" at the Hyperion Theatre is restive post World War 1 Germany, where the atmosphere of corruption, malaise and dismay points to the period of hiatus before the war resumed with a new number attached. We meet Frau and Herr Balicke, stout bourgeois types, and the wealthy and decadent Murk, who has impregnated their daughter Anna and is considered "a catch". Into the scene walks Kragler, a war veteran who is Anna's former lover, assumed dead. He looks like a chimney sweep, ravaged beyond middle class pretension. The play deals with his efforts to reclaim Anna, but also with the burgeoning anti-bourgeoisie movement; in short, the hope of a heroic future that will transcend the ruinous complacency of the old guard.
… Denise Schultz is disarmingly subtle as Anna. At first, we think she is a lump, but a later quickness of thought and movement suggest an awakening.

Ed Turner for Drama-Logue
There is something about this piece which sticks uncomfortably after viewing, a viscosity that is disconcerting when considering the excellent entertaining quality by which the Hyperion acting ensemble presented the material.
Set in post WW1 Germany against a background of social revolution, Drums is a love story (Brecht called it a comedy). Andre Kragler, a soldier returns home after four years as a prisoner of war on the eve his lover Anna has betrothed herself to another man. Besides having to regain Anna's love, Kragler must decide on whether to remain a soldier and fight in the revolution which wages through Germany, or remain with Anna. He opts for Anna.
The director has cast the production with great care. He maintains a consistent pace which the actors carry with exemplary talent.
Denise Schultz as Anna is alive with soft, fine, facial expressions which convey her character's complexity and indecision.