The influence of Bertolt Brecht's anti-realist, Epic Theatre movement upon Bruiser's performance style has been much in evidence since the Belfast-based company's earliest days. Indeed, this sprawling masterpiece, written towards the end of World War II, is such a heaven-sent vehicle that one wonders why it took the creative team so long to get round to producing it.  

 

The play's vast geographic, narrative and political sweep, with its large cast of overblown characters, offers rich pickings for director Lisa May's penchant for energetic physical theatre.  On entering the auditorium, proceedings on stage are already well underway.  As they settle into their seats, audience members are drawn into a busy world of farm labourers and scheming politicians. James McFetridge's mellow lighting lends a lovely period glow to Stuart Marshall's handsome set of towering wooden stockades and towers, slowly bringing it to life like a Breughel painting.  The voices of hard-working country folk call and echo across unseen fields and valleys, farm implements clatter and crash, the bells of goats and cows ring out from distant pastures.

 

May wisely opts to include Brecht's frequently ignored prologue, which underlines the political context of the story, together with the fact that what is about to unfold is a play within a play. The broad framework is here set in the post-war Soviet Union and focuses on a dispute between two rural communes: one community grows fruit, the other raises goats. There is discord over who should own and run village land, recently abandoned by the retreating Nazi forces. A Government official has arrived to make a ruling and to encourage the locals to recognise the benefits of collective action.  In true Brechtian fashion, one of the warring communes chooses drama as the medium through which to make its case. Local people step into the dramatis personae of a popular local folk tale, while a well known singer volunteers to act as narrator and guide.

 

The chosen story is a weird combination of the Biblical tale of the Judgement of Solomon and an ancient Chinese play The Circle of Chalk, all of it encased in complex politicking and earnest pontificating. It is, on the surface, the parable of Grusha Vachnadze, a peasant girl, who rescues a baby boy born to a privileged family and battles through thick and thin for his safety and protection.  In the process she proves herself an eminently more caring parent than the child's frivolous natural mother. Surviving the ravages of war, threats of rape, a disastrous arranged marriage and an apparently doomed love affair, Grusha must summon up instinct, logic and love in her eventual legal contest for guardianship, a contest which will be decided within the ancient tradition of the chalk circle.  

 

Regardless of presentational styles and directorial decisions, any production will inevitably contain large helpings of what was once memorably described by Guardian critic Alfred Hickling as the “wholefood aspect” of Brecht, implying that anything gritty and a tad indigestible must, by definition, be good for the constitution.  And so it is with this version, which for all its hearty spirit and inventiveness, feels at times a little over-anxious to do good.  This impression lingers in spite of Matthew Reeve’s atmospheric music, which paints vivid pictures and harmonious memories.  The instrumentalists and singers in the cast evoke the old fashioned family values and close-knit community spirit of the Russian shtetl, summoning segments of fun and mischief while injecting pace and humour into Brecht's famously long-winded play of two halves. 

 

In physical appearance and demeanour, Nuala McGowan emerges as an intense, feisty Grusha. Chin jutting, eyes staring fixedly into an unknown future, she traverses snowy wastes and bleak mountain ranges, registering as the most rounded character in the entire piece. Fra Gunn is up to all kinds of mischief, clearly in his element as he pops up in a gallery of comic, grotesque and sinister roles, not the least of which involves the flaunting of a hideous set of woolly genitals.

 

Similarly, the always reliable Karl O'Neill adds welcome weight to the unfolding tale, demonstrating marvellous versatility and humour, whether as the corrupt governor Abashvilli or the lascivious judge Azdak.  A crisply spoken Dave Marken is all strutting self-importance as Simon Chachava, the cheeky soldier who steals Grusha's heart. Elsewhere, a handful of individual performances fall short of Bruiser's high standards, with too many examples of soggy diction and excruciating attempts at ethnic accents.  Crucially, the role of the singer Arkadi Cheidze is pivotal to the forward propulsion of the action but here an innocent-faced, soft-voiced Geoff Hatt appears hesitant and out of synch with the dramatic momentum and political score settling reverberating around him.  

 

There is much to admire in this musically adept, visually stunning production, which incorporates mask, mime, dumb show and puppetry, the latter put to effective use in portraying the growing child Michael. While just about managing to avoid preachy didacticism, it is for the most part a sparky, workmanlike interpretation of the vision of one of the theatrical giants of the twentieth century.