I was cautiously optimistic going into Cheshire Academy’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” directed by Marc Aronson. On one hand, I am well acquainted with many of the people who were involved in the production and already knew of their talents. On the other hand, Brecht’s style of play doesn’t lend itself well to a high school performance; wordy with an emphasis on social themes. While I was unable to attend Mr. Aronson’s last Brecht production, “Life of Galileo”, the snippets I heard about it afterwards were not positive, with the major complaint being that it was boring.
Fortunately, of the many words I could use to describe this performance of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”, ‘boring’ is not one of them. This is mainly due to the actors, all of whom seemed perfectly cast. This play has only a few developed characters but a revolving door of ensemble members, yet the actors were able to make each role stand on its own. David Mathison in particular succeeded in this with his wide range of voices and mannerisms, going from a paranoid cloaked figure speaking in fragmented sentences to a squeaky voiced nobleman to a regal lawyer back to back. Peter Deng was the most emotive member of the cast, especially evident in the first scene where he was always reacting to the others’ actions rather than just sitting there.
In terms of single roles, Sam Weed was the natural choice to play the motherly Grusha, and I feel that she managed to play up Grusha’s practical nature in the earlier scenes rather than simply portraying her as a naïve, good-hearted girl; she even got a lovely little singing moment when crossing the bridge. However, the performance that surprised me the most was Amalia Gutierrez as the non-singing Singer. Not only did she have moments of sass, like at the very end of the opening scene, and genuine emotion when reciting the inner thoughts of the characters, but she felt much more present in the scenes than you would expect from a Narrator. She would sometimes stand right up next to the actors, occasionally directly interacting with them as with the Governor when he was being led off to his execution, and other times she would be hanging back on the edges of the stage watching the action unfold before her.
The constant presence of the Singer reminds the audience that, in both the full context of the play itself and our reality, the story being told is just that - a story. This is one of many ways in which the show followed Brechtian principles. The sets were no more complicated than they need to be, and there were practically no attempts to hide the stage crew when they came to move things around. For moments where there were supposed to be a large number of characters on stage, they simply played recordings of teachers reading the lines. Having these disembodied voices of people whom the audience are likely to recognize ends up subtracting from the illusion rather than adding to it, which seems to have been intentional. The opening of the play set this precedent by having a folksy song play while the actors come in stage, and then forcing both them and the audience to wait, silently and patiently, until the song ended.
Having read the entire play in advance for class, I took note of what changes were made. Due to the size of the cast, some scenes which used to feature four or five random characters were slightly reworked to have the number of characters reduced to two or three, such as when Grusha is initially watching baby Michael at the palace while the others convince her to leave, and the scene with the merchants at the bridge where three characters were condensed to two. Other bits were cut entirely, such as when Grusha tries to stay at the inn, when young Michael is allying with the older children, and the selection of Azdack’s past cases as judge. These cuts were understandable due to the limited cast size, and seeing as the play in this form ended up being two hours long anyway, I can only imagine how long it would have been if they had done everything. Even with these cuts, the story’s major themes, such as justice (Azdack’s corrupt sense of justice, the idea that items go to those who can make the most good out of it).
The last thing I’d like to note is the placement of the intermission. Rather than being halfway through the play, it occurs later on, right before Azdack’s backstory. By doing this, the play becomes re-framed as two different stories: first, the story of the maid Grusha becoming the mother of the noble child; and second, the story of the illegitimate judge who, through granting Grusha custody over Michael, delivers the moral of the play, that goods should go to those who can make the most out of them. Not only are both these stories made compelling by the excellent performances, but making Azdack essentially a secondary protagonist places an even greater emphasis on the social message, making this performance of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” a perfect blend of the Brecht and more contemptorary styles of acting. I would drop everything to see this show again if I had the chance.
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