FROM THE CAUCASUS COMES UPHEAVAL

Two Bertolt Brecht plays bookend the performances of three graduating seniors whose first fall theater appearances began with “Galileo” in 2014 and ended in November 2017 with the Varsity Players staging of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle.” Amalia Gutierrez ’18, David Mathisson ’18 and Samantha Weed ’18, delivered “incredible, deep, nuanced performances,” Marc Aronson, the English department chair, wrote in his “Director’s Note.”

The three seniors are on stage in virtually every scene of the play, written in 1944 about the upheaval of farming rights, cultural shifts and morality. Mathisson, who played “Shalva,” delivered one of the first lines of the performance, as peasants from two villages in the Caucasus Mountains near Russia gather to decide their future. “What to do with the valley?” he asks.

The question of who owns the land plows into the central theme of the play: Who “owns” the baby? The plot is derived in part from a 13th century Chinese tale about a chalk circle and choice. If two women claim to be a child’s mother, which one would exert more force to claim the title? The playwright reveals that a genetic connection is not always a loving one.

“Those who had no part in fortune often share in misfortune,” said “The Singer,” played by Gutierrez. The character serves as the play’s narrator, leading the audience forward and backward in time to explain the results of a military coup, the whereabouts of the baby and the injustice of justice.

Weed plays Grusha Vashnadze, a peasant who cares for the baby who isn’t hers. “A helpless girl adopts a helpless child,” says a disloyal woman who turns in the pair. When Grusha is brought back to the city for trial, she faces a new judge played by Peter Deng ’18, who was handpicked for the bench by a prince. Despite bribes and his own drunkenness, the judge rejects the plaintiff’s demands for the return of the child. “This is a court full of schemers,” the judge said.

In the end, a simple chalk circle, and the kindness of a peasant woman stand against the wealth and power of a mother who cares more for her possessions than her child.