THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE
Virtue may be its own reward, but that’s little protection in a world that despises it. In The Caucasian Chalk Circle Brecht told a bitter truth–that the rich expect the poor to be submissive and to act morally, so they can fleece them more effectively–that charges the play with the kind of knowing anger vital to Brecht’s polemics.
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In The Caucasian Chalk Circle (which Brecht based on both a legend of King Solomon and a 13th-century Chinese play) doing good seems more an instinct than a choice: only rich people are always able to choose. In a time of civil unrest, the kitchen maid Grusha rescues a noble child abandoned by his selfish mother, the Governor’s Wife. Though a lifetime of hard times has taught Grusha to expect no help, her kindness defies her experience and she saves the baby as automatically as the mother has deserted him. She then tenaciously honors her unsought trust, escaping pursuing soldiers by crossing a perilous footbridge, enduring the evil hospitality of her religious sister-in-law, and marrying for money.
The lesson Azdak offers–“Things should belong to those who do well by them”–also confirms a larger point. The Caucasian Chalk Circle offers a parable within a parable–“old and new wisdoms make an excellent mixture,” as Brecht writes in the play. Grusha’s saga is enacted by the Singer and his players, who celebrate the resolution of a property dispute between two communes in the Caucasus. The fruit farmers are taking possession of a valley formerly cultivated by goatherds. The reason: their yield will be superior.
Solid support comes from Deanna Dunagan as the cold-blooded Governor’s Wife (who resembles Dunagan’s equally forbidding Volumnia in Next Theatre’s Coriolanus–and Nancy Reagan) and Ray Chapman as Grusha’s much-tested soldier lover, Simon. Denis O’Hare, a reliably scathing comic, runs through a whole tournament of deft comic cameos. But the ensemble work–usually a Court Theatre forte–seems slapdash and secondary.
