Theatre in Review: The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Classic Stage Company)

	Jason Babinsky and Christopher Lloyd. Photo: Joan Marcus

The director Brian Kulick makes a boldly imaginative gambit in his new staging of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and, before the production runs out of steam, it offers a fresh look at a classic rarely seen in New York. Bertolt Brecht's 1944 fable of goodness at bay in a corrupt and conniving world begins with a framing device in which two sets of peasants square off in a war-torn village in the aftermath of World War II. One group, the Rosa Luxemburg Commune, stages a play about the adventures of Grusha, a servant girl in a war-torn nation, the baby who becomes her responsibility, and Azdak, a clerk who improbably becomes a judge and presides over her fate.

First off, Kulick scraps the prologue, resetting the action among the dashed hopes and busted infrastructure that marked the last days of the Soviet Union. The upstage wall of Tony Straiges' set is covered with torn posters depicting square-jawed workers awaiting a glorious future that will not come. Before the night is over, the hammer and sickle at upstage will be replaced by a dirty, graffiti-stained Coca-Cola logo. A statue of Stalin stands, barely, waiting to be toppled; early on, its head will be removed. Pieces of furniture dangle mysteriously overhead, as if to suggest a world turned upside down. The cast enters, speaking Russian in a bickering manner, then switches to English for the opening number, which is cut off in the middle by a blackout. (The wheeze of a failing generator indicates the depth of their collective predicament.)

It's a daring idea to stage Brecht's tale in the ruins of the system that informed most of his life, but this bleak, morally bankrupt environment proves to be highly suitable for a tale in which, until a last-minute reversal of fortune, no good deed goes unpunished. ("Terrible is the temptation to do good," warns The Singer, who acts narrates the play's first half.) That temptation overtakes Grusha, a servant girl to the wife of the country's corrupt governor, who, like that statue, has been beheaded. (The country, Grusinia -- read Georgia -- has been devastated by the Persian army.) The governor's wife flees, leaving Grusha with their child; initially against her will, Grusha protects the infant, eventually fleeing with it -- a decision that keeps her from reuniting with Simon, her fiancé.

For the first half, as Grusha goes from pillar to post, becoming hopelessly attached to the baby, everything goes right. Elizabeth A. Davis is a touching and stouthearted Grusha, singing her numbers in a plaintive, yet powerful, voice. (The music, by Duncan Sheik, at first sounds too pop-oriented for the occasion -- surely Paul Dessau's original score was far more astringent -- but Sheik's melodies have a strongly melancholy pull and they admirably suit W. H. Auden's lyrics.) Mary Testa's wicked chuckle and screwball-comedy delivery make the governor's wife kind of a fast-talking flibbertigibbet who is so worried about her wardrobe that she just plain forgets about thechild she leaves behind. Tom Riis Farrell is almost debonair as the Fat Prince who seeks to destroy the baby. ("I forbid you to limp," he tells one of his henchmen, exhausted by the chase.) The English translation, by James and Tania Stern, is direct and devastating in equal measures. Grusha's brother, describing his domineering wife, says, apologetically, "She has a good heart, but only after dinner." When Grusha is married off to a young man with one foot in the grave, the presiding monk -- a priest was deemed too expensive -- concludes the ceremony by saying, "We declare this marriage contracted. Should we do the last rites now?"

Throughout these scenes, Kulick's staging is marked by an admirable economy. A handful of potatoes are scattered on the ground and we are in a field. The sound of water dripping into several buckets announces the arrival of spring. Grusha's escape across a rickety bridge is staged with Davis delicately stepping on a series of suitcases. Even a potentially hokey bit in which members of the audience are invited on stage to fill out an underpopulated wedding scene fits the production's ruefully amusing mood; first, apologies are offered for the poverty of the proceedings, and then the volunteers are produced, clad in Soviet red sweaters. Kulick also manages to repeat the blackout gag, this time to a more moving effect as candles are produced and the cast waits out the interruption with a Russian ballad.

But something goes terribly awry after intermission for reasons that are hard to pinpoint. Part of the fault lies with Brecht: The action shifts from Grusha to Azdak, whose up-and-down adventures are much less compelling. He bounces between being an authority figure and a victim, for reasons that feel entirely arbitrary, especially after an hour or so spent worrying about the fate of Grusha and her baby. This seemingly endless tangle of plot twists simply must be endured until he meets up with Grusha, who is trying to hold on to the child after the governor's wife reappears. This falling-off of interest was true of my only previous experience with The Caucasian Chalk Circle, at the Public Theater in 1990; even under the direction of George C. Wolfe and with a cast that included Charlayne Woodard, Reggie Montgomery, Novella Nelson, and Tonya Pinkins, it ended up being a bit of a chore to sit through.

But casting has something to do with it, too: With his lanky frame, a voice pitched just above a whisper, and a face worthy of a George Grosz caricature, Christopher Lloyd makes an appropriately Brechtian narrator, watching over the action with a cold eye. Paradoxically, he is more powerful standing in the background; when he takes over as Azdak, he no longer seizes our attention, having lost the gravity and stillness that made his work so impressive. (It doesn't help that, at the performance I attended, he seemed a little winded by this marathon role.) As a result, what started as an arrestingly barbed fairy tale limps through a remarkably dull second half before arriving at a surprisingly sentimental happy ending.

Everything else cannot be faulted. The rest of the cast, including Jason Babinsky as both Grusha's arranged husband and a nit-picking lawyer, Deb Radloff as Grusha's icy sister-in-law, and Alex Hurt as Simon, does well. Anita Yavich's costumes, which range from mink coats to peasant blouses, are highly evocative and suited to the characters. Justin Townsend's understated lighting nevertheless contains some lovely compositions, especially his nighttime looks. Matt Kraus' sound design provides solid reinforcement for the recorded music.

In a season that has seen a disastrous attempt at reviving Baal and a captivating new version of The Good Person of Szechuan, this Caucasian Chalk Circle must count as a draw. Even so, the wit and originality of Kulick's production are undeniable. He hasn't brought Brecht into the 20th century. Instead, he has done something much more interesting: He has placed the playwright in the moment in history when his Marxist dream came crashing down. -- David Barbour