The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Synopsis

When the Governor's Wife abandons her baby in her haste to keep her collection of dresses, Grusha, the humble kitchen maid, saves the child from death and faces danger and adversity to protect him. A drunken village clerk, Azdak, is made judge by accident and tries her case. An epic and compelling morality tale of possession and rights.

Our Review:

20 November 2001

In his dramas, Bertolt Brecht is famed for his use of what's popularly known as the "alienation effect", where the personal and emotive is jettisoned in favour of the more rational and universal. Brecht believed that the common practice of performing plays that, as he saw it, predominantly stirred the emotions at the expense of the intellect, was a misplaced emphasis and in a poem reflected: " It seems to me a sorry trade / Putting on plays solely / To stir up inert feelings."

He thus consciously chose to write dramas that subverted conventional expectation, most familiarly in Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The latter was written in 1945 but was tur...

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