Fall Play Review

Right or Wrong? It depends.

On November 10th, I went to see the CA adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. It was translated by Eric Bently.  The play was performed in the black box theater of Cheshire Academy. The character Grusha Vashnadze was played by Samantha “Sam” Weed. The character Azdak was played by Yuheng Deng. Simon Shashava was played by Yuanjun Luo. Amalia Gutierrez was the singer in the play.

The story took place in the aftermath of WWII. Lots governors were executed at that time. Including one wealthy Georgi Abashwili. After he died, his wife, Natella Abashvili tried to run away from the capital city so that she doesn't get killed either. However, Natella was so focused on her dresses that she forgot to bring her son, Michael with her. Their servant Grusha Vachnadze saw the poor child and decided to take care of the child until his mother comes back to him. Even though Grusha had promised Simon Shashava, a soldier, to wait for him and marry him after he returns from the battle, she brought the child away so that he can stay safe. The soldiers had been chasing after Grusha after she took the child with her. Grusha traveled to various places to settle the child but no one would help her. Finally, she married with a peasant and lived with him to raise Michael up. However, the war ended the soon. The soldier had come back but found out that his young lady had married another man. At the same time, Natella Abashwili came back to and asked for Michael. She paid lots money to the judge in order to win the case. The judge, Azdak, draw the circle and asked Grusha and Natella to pull the child out of the circle at the same time. They both have to try to pull the child to their sides. However, Grusha didn’t hold on to the child because she didn’t want to hurt him. Azdak now sees who really cares about the child and decided to give Grusha the right to mother the child. He also divorced Grusha and the peasant so that Grusha can live with her true love.

The staging choices of the play are very special. First of all, all the characters are dressed almost the same. However, they each have additional crops or clothing on when they play different characters. In that way, the cost of crops are reduced and the audience can distinguish among characters easily too. For the background of the stage, there was nothing for decoration. It didn’t make the scene boring like I would think. Instead, it even somehow forced the audiences to pay closer attention to the actors since there isn’t really anything else to look at. The music in the play was mostly quiet. However, there is a long song in the beginning of the play. Everyone was just sitting under a dark light, silently, without any actions. I wasn’t sure of the purpose of that part until I asked the people in the play. They told me, as the introduction said, this play is serious. Therefore, the director wants the audience to have about three minutes of silence before the play really beginnings. In this three minutes, they can calm down and think about what is going to happen so that when the play begins, people can pay more attention to it. This is a great idea. I found myself being so calm with the quiet music play and yet so excited about what is going to happen next.

The character that I like the most is played by Jiaxin(Linda) Li. This character is called Natella Abashwili. She is not a nice character. She is always commanding people around and being bossy to others. She cares more about her dresses than she does to her own son. That is really irresponsible. However, I like the character, not because of her “meanness”. I like the character because it was well-played by Linda. Linda had excellent facial expression to show her emotions. For example, when she is giving out orders that make no sense to others and blaming them for not understanding what she is saying, her face actually likes mad and confused. It makes me feel that this character really thinks that she is right all the time and think everyone else is stupid. And that is how the character is like. Linda’s acting makes me feel so natural. Like if she herself is meant to be a mean person like that.

The theme of the play was to show the justice and the injustice in the world. Is it an injustice for the lady to tell the soldiers that the child is not her own so that she doesn’t get in trouble? Some people might think it is, since the lady is betraying the trust that Grusha gave her. However, it is really wrong for people to tell the truth to protect themselves? No. Another example, is it justice for Grusha to decide to keep the child by her side? Yes, because she raised him up and took care of him more than anyone else in the world. No, because no matter what she does, she cannot take away the child from his mom who gave birth to him. The play really led me to think in different perspectives of the situations and think deeper about what true justice is.

All in all, I am surprised by how great the performance is and how talented the actors in our society are. I had seen how much effort my friends had put into the play to make the best it can be. The audiences that were at the play were highly respectful too. I really liked this play and I had learned lots things from it too.