Brecht’s celebrated work of epic theatre is set to be the unmissable extravaganza of Hilary term, hitting up the Playhouse stage in 7th week. In a series of tell-all features, members of the cast and production team will be revealing to Cherwell the trials, tribulations and joys of being involved in one of Oxford’s biggest and wildest current plays.
First days are exhausting. Changing schools, Freshers’ Week, rehearsals with a new cast, these days send you to bed with a sore face due to plastered smiles and the niggling hope that you’ve made friends. I have many reasons to thank Jessica Lazar and Edwina Christie for casting me as Natella Abashvilli in this term’s production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, one of which is giving me a character that not only eliminated any aching in my face, but also saved me from worrying about making friends that day, because I probably didn’t.
There was no question about it. After being required on the first day to spurn half the cast, shriek at the lovely Claire Bowman, ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch!’ and kick Luke Rollason in the face (sorry, Luke. Still feeling very bad about that), any niggling hope was impaled – though it was quite cathartic.
Indeed, we all quickly found out that there is nothing bashful about Natella Abashvilli.* Wife to the autocratic Governor of Nukha, Natella is monomaniacal in her pursuit of attention and shoes. When Nukha is set ablaze by rioters, and her husband brought out in chains to be beheaded, she lingers in the palace hysterically ordering servants to fetch her clothes on fear of being flogged. When she sends the nanny (Emma D’Arcy) off to find her morocco slippers, her son Michael is put down, eventually lost and swaddled in a mountain of gowns. Then she frantically flees from the burning town without her husband’s heir – and only a fraction of the clothes Natella asked for – inciting a plot-worth of troubles as the kind-hearted kitchen maid, Grusha (Connie Greenfield), stumbles across him and promises to keep him safe.
Costume is obviously of key importance to Natella. Whilst Anusha Mistry is checking out the National Theatre costume wardrobe for morocco slippers and fantastical 1940s dresses and furs, peasant clothing is surprisingly going to be a staple for me, and the rest of the cast, as we all start the play in rustic garb. The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play-within-a-play. The main two hours’ traffic of our stage is set as a parable for the folk of two communes in the Soviet Union after WWII, hence the rags (this is, of course, a sneaky way of setting up a moral lesson for the audience too).
So: peasants, maniacal shrieking, ‘swaddle’. Yes, the play is meant to be a comedy – please come. On at the Playhouse, with the promise of singing, puppetry à la War Horse, and Azdak, the rascal judge, it is a spectacle for the ears, the eyes, and the temperament. And for 7th week, when exasperation has hit its height, it will serve as a vital reminder that ‘in bad times, there are good people’. Well, except for my character.
*Dom Applewhite must either be credited or blamed for conjuring the following joke:
‘What are you doing if you’re embarrassed about applying your chocolate spread?’
‘Spreading Natella Abashvelli!’
