A Brechtian perspective on London Road: Class representations, dialectics and the ‘gestic’ character of music from stage to screen

Abstract

This article uses Brechtian philosophy to assess the role of music and song in the audience reception of the ‘verbatim musical’ London Road. The first section analyses class representations in London Road, with a particular focus on the dialectics and the ‘gestic’ role of the music and song. The second section explores how the adaptation from stage to screen further affects the dialectics of the musical and, paradoxically, serves key Brechtian aims. I focus on two dramaturgical changes in the adaptation from stage to screen: the chronological order of the narrative and the alternation of interview sections and dramatized sections, which resembles the structure of the popular drama-doc genre. Given that reordering and restaging the original verbatim numbers affected audience reception, I analyse the way the meaning is affected through the Brechtian notions of alienation and the gestic character of music. Throughout, I discuss class representations and relevant dialectical implications.