BWW Reviews: THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE at Yale Repertory Theater

Yale Rep's production of Bertolt Brecht's classic CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE is very faithful to his intentions as a politically motivated playwright and theorist. This text is a staple of theater history classes, but fairly rarely produced. Like many of Brecht's plays, it has several forebears, including a 13th century Chinese crime drama and a German expressionist play of 1925, based in part on the judgment of Solomon story from the Old Testament. Like Shakespeare, Brecht's importance lies far less in the originality of his plots than in his treatment of them.

If anything, director Liz Diamond, assisted by several Yale dramaturgs, has been too faithful to the text. The show runs long-2 hours and 40 minutes with one intermission-and frankly drags in the first half of Act 2, where we lose sight for too long of Grusha, the central character. Brecht's desire to highlight social upheaval as a general phenomenon, and wean us from identification with single characters in favor of dissecting general social injustice, makes for some tedium that needs trimming. Adaptations of Brecht often serve his ends better than straight Brecht, in this reviewer's opinion.

Grusha is a poor kitchen maid in the palace of a vaguely Eastern European dictatorship. When a military coup deposes the cartoonish governor and his narcissistic wife, it is Grusha who has the compassion to take up the abandoned infant child of the deposed couple, changing her own life forever. Played here by a second year MFA candidate Shaunette Renée Wilson, Grusha successfully blends resourcefulness with romantic optimism.

Crucial to the action is Azdak, the singer/narrator who jumps us through the action with direct address and intermittent songs, and then plays the judge in Act 2. Veteran actor Steven Skybell drives the action in Act 1 with authority, despite his status as a wandering outsider, and then revels in the opportunity to both wield and mock power in Act 2. He's intense and quixotic by turns, and always engaging. Other standout performers in the large ensemble include Jesse J. Perez, whose antic movement animates some of the talkier bits, and the diminutive Julyana Soelistyo, who knows the value of stillness. She plays more than four different parts, and is readily identifiable in each though they are quite distinct: this is Brechtian casting.

The best innovation in this production is newly commissioned music from Pulitzer-prize winning composer David Lang, who is on the Yale faculty. His simple melodies verge on the recitative, which keeps the language in the forefront. They rarely resolve, leading us back into the action of the play off-balance in a way Brecht would have approved. Lightly accompanied by a wide range of instrumentation-some chimes and xylophone here, some solo violin there-individual singers convey meta-thinking directly to the audience, and the focus is on the ideas, not on the musical gymnastics of the vocalist. Twice Lang rolls out more layered music, and both times it is fine, and beautifully performed: there is a lovely setting of the male trio 'The Song of Chaos' and a great little gypsy jazz ensemble, complete with accordion, trumpet, and guitar. A nice touch too is that the most brutal of the jackbooted mercenary soldiers is also the violinist. Brecht wanted his actors to comment on their characters at the same time they perform them-a theoretical twist that is easier to explain than to execute, but this is a time it happens.

Liz Diamond underlines the way in which this Brechtian parable remains topical, in our age of failed states, random and brutal violence, and refugee hordes. The design teams-set, costume, sound, and light-all do their jobs with flair. I particularly liked the use of moving projections against flat set elements. Brecht insisted on keeping the fakery of theater in full view. He's well served here.

The show runs through April 11, and includes a few morning matinee performances so area schools can introduce students to Brecht, whose impact on theater production norms has been profound.

Photo credit: Carol Rosegg

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