Bertolt Brecht's parable-within-a-play and his presentational style are well-suited to the Open Circle aesthetic and mission, which is to showcase theater professionals with disabilities. This production features two deaf actors (they sign their parts, while another actor on- or offstage interprets for them with spoken word) and two actors with physical limitations in a total cast of fifteen creating more than 50 roles. Hearing actors also simultaneously sign their parts (truth to tell, some are more accomplished and fluent at this than others). The signing works especially well in passages narrated by a mutliple-voice chorus and by the Story Teller (the flexible and flamboyant Eva Salvetti). There's a spicy variety of dialects of spoken English among the cast, too.

The production conjures the stories of Grusha, the maid who takes an abandoned child for her own, and Azdak, the feckless villager elevated to the judicial bench, out of not much more set than some rehearsal blocks and a wheelbarrow (ever so inventively used). Costumes and lights are spot on. Suzanne Richard's (Grusha's) diminutive stature works well in the section in which she must cross a rickety bridge, the child on her back, to escape pursuing soldiers: four actors make a bridge with their backs, and she crosses them, buck-buck-style. Richard also does very nicely in the sung passages of her text. Scot McKenzie is engaging as the satirically bad judge Azdak, but should lighten up on some of the anachronistic schtick.

The framing device—two squabbling factions of villagers who are united by the power of parable—doesn't come off that well in this production. The fighting peasants have been moved to Iraq, to be topical, I suppose. The closing moments of the play fail to bring their dispute back into the narrative flow.

posted: 6:53:10 PM