There is much to enjoy in this highly inventive, whirligig production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, performed with great energy by the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s MFA Professional Acting students. It features good music, and some eye-catching performances. Right from the start there is a sense of fun, and of provocative social comment, too. On entering, the audience is greeted by members of the cast who hand out leaflets about a community project. The atmosphere is informal, and the boundary between audience and performers is blurred, with a musician inviting us to join in some singing. We discover that there is to be a presentation advocating the modernisation of the community centre. 

In Brecht’s original play, two peasant communes argue over the ownership of rural land, before one group dramatizes a story that argues that resources should go to those who make best use of them.  Here, in Frank McGuinness’s modern translation, the setting is urban, and the dispute is between people strongly rooted in the community, and invading property developers who are hell bent on gentrifying the area.  The locals are to be elbowed out, and billionaires who enjoy spending £9 on a cup of coffee are to be moved in. This sequence is slickly and amusingly delivered, and has sharp local relevance, being performed in an area of Bristol where the pros and cons of different kinds of urban development are an on-going issue. The presentation is interrupted when some travelling performers burst in and begin to tell the parable of the Chalk Circle, a tale about the rightful ownership of a baby.

Brecht was determined that we should never totally lose ourselves in his plays. Strictly anti-realist, and politically motivated, he believed audiences should be detached, critical observers. Hence the play-within-a-play structure of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which ensures that we never lose sight of the fact that we are watching a ‘performance’.  This can be taken too far, creating a distancing effect that can result in rather dry productions that stimulate the intellect, but neglect the emotions. The enduring popularity of The Caucasian Chalk Circle surely has much to do with the fact that at its heart, it has a very moving story of an endangered baby and a brave young woman.

For us to become fully engaged with the moral and political content of the play, we need to empathise with Grusha, the peasant girl who shows great moral courage in caring for baby Michael, abandoned by his mother, the Governor’s wife, during a civil war. Marine Laurencelle is a very touching Grusha, whose quiet dignity and physical courage contrast sharply with the selfish and cowardly behaviour of her superiors. Some of this production’s best moments are those that depict her tentative relationship with the shy Simon Shashava, a soldier who tends to speak of himself in the third person.  James Costello Ladanyi is a charming Simon, hesitant in manner, yet clearly very fond of Grusha.

Baby Michael’s mother, Natelli Abashvili, is played with great comic skill by Freja Zeuthen.  Petulant, self-obsessed and far more concerned for the fate of her expensive clothes than she is for her baby’s welfare, she throws tearful tantrums one moment, and flies into wild fury the next. Her behaviour is outrageous, but recognisably that of a super-rich woman whose crass materialism has swamped any maternal instincts that she might once have had. Some of the other characters that Grusha encounters on her adventures are more fanciful, far-fetched creations.  One of Brecht’s heroes was Charles Chaplin, and this production certainly features a great deal of knockabout clowning.  At times this is overdone, and the buffoonery detracts from the story-telling. The set features very skilfully done back projections that depict the Georgia of the Caucasus, but the folks that Grusha meets are all-American caricatures, often of an extreme kind. The performances are full-blooded, not least in their exaggerated hillbilly accents, but the non-stop foolery is rather wearying.

When Grusha is commanded to return baby Michael to her mother, she turns for help to Azdak, a wily rogue who, through a twist of fate, has become a judge.  Alice Birbara plays Azdak as an over-sensualised, cocaine-snorting libertine, outrageously self-indulgent, yet with a sharp, intelligent sense of justice.  It’s a magnetic, shamelessly OTT performance that I enjoyed, but it features some surreal stage business that seems unnecessary. I’d ditch the space hopper.  At times this production ventures too far into territory normally occupied by the theatre of the absurd. However, there were many in last night’s audience who clearly relished the absurdity.

This is a very lively and imaginative production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.  The musicians are excellent, there are good performances in the key roles, and the ensemble work is well-choreographed and cleverly executed.  But I found the narrative sometimes loses its way amid an over-abundance of sight gags and grotesquery.  However, congratulations must go to this year’s MFA Professional Acting students at the BOVTS, who have proved to be an exceptionally talented bunch.  They deserve every success in the future.    ★★★☆☆   Mike Whitton    26^th June 2019