THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE. To 1 June.
Colchester
THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE
by Bertolt Brecht, translated James and Tania Stern, with W.H. Auden
Mercury Theatre To 1 June 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30 Mat 25 & 30 May 2.30pm
Signed 30 May 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS 01206 573948
Review Timothy Ramsden 24 May
A must for Brecht-lovers and 'Brecht'-haters alike; a superb, sharply-pointed adventure in humanity.This is the finest Chalk Circle I can recall since Georgia's Rustaveli Theatre visited Edinburgh with their revelatory production in 1979. By the end I was even sorry we hadn't seen Brecht's Prologue. That, with its story of contested ownership of a post-war valley, gives rise to the Chalk Circle story from passing actors.
Lefton's beautifully performed production is so involving that, by the end, I wanted the dramatic 'kick' of bringing the whole adventure back to the lives of 'real' people.
Never mind. What we have is true beat-a-track-to-their-doorway theatre. It's a sensuous adventure – exciting, heart-in-mouth stuff at times, yet plugged with Brechtian verfremdung. Nowhere more than in the songs. Adam Cork's score doesn't wholly escape the horrid tradition of harshlessly tuneless vapidity English productions often impose on songs in Brecht plays (the playwright himself worked with some of the finest tune-makers in 20th century music).
But usually it plays the game of bouncing the action off different genres. Nowhere better than in the cruel Ironshirts' marching song, which becomes a sentimental ballad; two men out to kill a child for money are suddenly spotlit (in the extreme white glare of Garry John Spraggett's song lighting) indulging in maudling, off-key emotion.
Katy Stephens' Grusha is magnificent. She begins as an unremarkable face in the crowd, a peasant with narrow mind – her first comment is stupidly superstitious – hunched shoulders and downcast head. The face is hard-featured, puzzled, inquiring. A few more years' peasant labour, she'd be stooping and prematurely wrinkled.
At first, she's far from heroic, finding new qualities within herself as events call them forward. This makes tremendous sense of her flight to the mountains. If she'd come first to the glacier, you feel, she'd have given up - her initial look up at the mountain ahead impresses how near defeat she is.
It's through finding the resources in herself when negotiating for milk, or knocking out the Ironshirt to save Michael's life (only just – the soldier has his spear raised) and running away, she builds to the point where, unglamorously, she hoists her skirt to cross the rickety bridge.
In one remarkably imaginative moment – by no means the only one – we see Grusha liberated, dancing for joy because she's freed herself from the burden of the deposed Governor's son. She's left him on a peasant's doorstep. Suddenly the two Ironshirts, out for the Boy's life, march harshly past her. How she reacts will determine the kind of person she will be.
For this is a woman who makes herself through experience, becoming someone maternal with whom a child can thrive. She finds – like Beattie Bryant, like educated Rita – areas of herself she might never have known existed. Which is why, in the finely intense moment when Azdak tempts her to let the child go and be brought up wealthy, we know she must say no.
We're helped by Shuna Snow's superbly awful Governor's Wife. She's complacent – in the riots unable to believe anything will ever change for her - violent – her lawyers restrain her from attacking anyone who annoys her - and visibly bored even as her pompously prepared legal eagle (the oleaginous Paul Humpoletz, also a jovially Stalinesque Prince) presents her case to own the child. The play's summed up in the contrast between the two women at the Chalk Circle test – Grusha kneeling close to Michael, holding his hand, caressing the boy, Mrs Governor holding her body back at arm's length, in a forced, formal pose.
The second half shows more effort than the first, but Ignatius Anthony grows in authority as clerk-turned-judge Azdak, paralleling Grusha's self-development. Tim Treslove is excellent, comic as an Ironshirt corporal and a violent robber, vividly pathetic as Lavrenti, the weak man who wants to do good and asserts himself when no-one's around to stop him. But the evening is a triumph all round.
Doctor/Peasant Woman/Mother-in-Law/Limping Man/Villager/Lawyer: Christine Absalom
Azdak/Rider/Servant/Blockhead/Wedding Guest: Ignatius Anthony
Invalid/Innkeeper/Villager/Ironshirt: Rod Arthur
Beggar/Petitioner/Soldier/Cook/Sister-in-Law/Wedding Guest/Ludovica/Farmer: Natasha Buckley
Soldier/Servant/Man at Bridge/Yussup/Shauva: Tony Casement
Singer/Musician/Beggar/Petitioner/Soldier/Servant/Wedding Guest/Villager: Adam Cork
Simon/Beggar/Petitioner/Servant/Wedding Guest/Ironshirt/Stable Man/Villager: Justin Grattan
Fat Prince/Servant/Old Man Milk/Wedding Guest/Farmer: Paul Humpoletz
Governor's Wife/Wedding Guest/Nephew/Blackmailer/Farmer: Shuna Snow
Grusha/Beggar/Petitioner/Villager: Katy Stephens
Soldier/Adjutant/Corporal Shotta/Lavrenti/Ironshirt/Bandit/Lavrenti: Tim Treslove
Doctor/Nurse/Merchant/Woman at Bridge/Wedding Guest/Doctor/Miracle Woman/Ironshirt: Connie Walker
Director: Sue Lefton
Designer: Sara Perks
Lighting: Garry John Spraggett
Composer: Adam Cork
Fight director: Richard Ryan
2002-05-25 09:53:25