THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE
The Caucasian Chalk Circle may not be the greatest Brecht play, but it’s clearly the most Brechtian: a late work by a master who knows his voices and moves among them–plays among them–with tremendous assurance.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Based on a 14th-century Chinese play called The Chalk Circle, Brecht’s script opens at a meeting of workers from the Galinsk and Rosa Luxemburg collective farms, away down South in Soviet Georgia. World War II has just ended and the Galinskers–who herd goats–want to return to their ancestral valley, from which they’d moved “on orders from the authorities” during the war.
Or then again, you might want to read it as an impolitic swipe at those very same priests, since the scene leads right into just such a deviation. The meeting over, a storyteller named Arkadi entertains the farmers with his tale of Grusha–a servant in the household of Georgi Abashwili, the rich and ruthless governor of a town known as the City of the Damned.
Which is a wonderful ensemble, and lots of fun to watch. Cameron Pfiffner’s moves as Adzak are brilliantly Marxist in the Grouchovian sense. Michael Nowak’s a presence as the storyteller Arkadi. And Ellyn Duncan finally sheds the superciliousness that’s ruined several of her other performances and gives us strong work as Grusha–thanks partly to Nugent’s application of Brechtian alienation techniques.
