Word: grusha
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play-within-a-play, an entertainment put on by a Georgian singer for two collective farms which have agreed to redivide their lands after helping to drive the Nazis from the Soviet Union. The singer's play tells about the tribulations of Grusha, a girl who in the old days when Kazbek princes ruled Georgia took pity on a governor's son during a palace revolution; and about the trials of Azdak, a peasant who during the revolt managed to make himself a judge, and used the lawbooks for sitting on, turning them against...
...personal and communal dignity that lay behind them. So he showed the roots of the farmers' anti-fascist slogans and collective ambitions in simple, legendary stories, and the way the values of the stories made the anti-fascist slogans make sense, like Azdak's Solomon-like decision that Grusha keeps the governor's child because she won't try to pull him from a circle in a tug-of-war with the governor's ambitious widow. As a result, The Caucasian Chalk Circle has a traditional, tender, open quality that Brecht rarely allowed himself, and an archetypal quality that makes...
...warm, the Natural Ice Cream keeps you healthy (and fat) and Bert Brecht keeps you happy. For Brecht's world is one where the good guys are really good, and the bad guys are really bad. St. Joan is heroic and noble (and shows those Chicago stockyard bosses); Grusha of The Caucasian Chalk Circle triumphs gloriously over those mean Ironshirt heavies. And those who are neither good nor bad but are in morality's mushy middle are at least nice; Baal of Baal is no angel (or devil), but it's tough not to like...
...cast further developed their characters in rehearsal with simple animal personifications that came through in the performance. The only explicit animal metaphor used in performance was the satiric characterization of Aniko (Martha Crawford), Grusha's sister-in-law, as a shrilly blaring duck. But each actor implicitly reflected the sense of some non-human animal at one point or another. This was another device that the Three Sisters production also attempted, again with markedly less success...
This sense of bestiality accommodated one of the play's major themes very well. Brecht offers a contrast between the best and the worst in all of our natures. The predatory hideousness of the peasants, which upsets our romantic images of the harmony of rustic life, stands counterpoised to Grusha's courage and her magnificent love with Simon. Edelson emphasizes this dichotomy in his direction to a point that stretches credibility. The simplistic harshness of the contrast may be the production's only significant flaw...