"It's our job to entertain. Yours to draw conclusions"

On Wednesday night I went to see The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Sometimes when I go to the theatre I come out inspired, sometimes almost asleep and sometimes so frustrated at the quality that is passed off as professional theatre I end up venting my disappointment the entire journey home.

This performance was different; I was left with a sensation difficult to reduce into one word or one sentence, hence the compulsion to spend some time gathering my thoughts in this response.

The first thing that struck me about the production was how relevant the play was to the contemporary audience, despite it being written 65 years ago by a German playwright in exile in America. There was a sense of universality and truth about the play and this production of it that was routed in Brecht’s insightful understanding of humanity and the world we have created.

There were so many seemingly opposing ideas and concepts juxtaposed against each other, resulting in a retelling of the world that made a rare degree of sense. The sobering exposure of how one person will willingly degrade another was married with a story that is ultimately optimistic. The contrast of the poetic nature of reality was placed alongside examples of the petty base nature of humankind. There was violence and romance, betrayal and loyalty, utter greed and selfless sacrifice, justice and inequality and the tinderbox danger of corruption and power. In fact every emotion was contained in the three hours of theatre in a tapestry made richer by the heightened characters and the slightly fantastical nature of Epic theatre.

I was also struck at how the writer, director and company told the story of war on a micro level creating a much deeper understanding of its horrific price than the macro picture of body counts and resource inadequacies painted in our hourly news updates. News updates that we have almost come to accept as part of our daily life and as a result we often fail to register the significance of its content. In contrast I found the careless description of a rape by a morally corrupt soldier, as he chastises a subordinate for not relishing his part in it, abhorrent.

The list of things I took away from my evening at the theatre is substantial, hence my inability to condense. I’ll just mention a couple more of my thoughts before I close. Brecht expertly illustrated the relationship and contrast in between what is said, what is thought, what is felt and what is done. He showed us the necessity of making decisions and the implications of this, that reality often contradicts with our vision of what should be and the need to live with and by the decisions that are made. That the world isn’t perfect but that we have a responsibility to do what we can to make it better, rather than be dragged into the destruction.

I’m not the first practitioner to write about the didactic nature of Brecht’s work and I am nowhere near as knowledgeable as the majority but I felt it important to note that although time has passed, in showing us why things happen in addition to what happens, Brecht still has so much to teach us.

“Singer:
But you who’ve heard the tale
Of the chalk circle
Remember the wisdom of the ages:
That everything
Belongs by right to those who
Care for it:
Children to the motherly
So that the children thrive.
Horses to the good horsemen
So that the horses thrive
And the earth to good farmers
So that the earth may thrive.”

The Caucasian Chalk Circle - Bertolt Brecht