THEATER

Full Circle

Written by Charles L. Mee

Directed by Robert Woodruff

Starring Mary Schultz, Mirjana Jokovic, Will Lebow

Through March 19

What Goes Around...

By JASON CLARKE

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Just before the halfway point in Charles L. Mee's play Full Circle, East Berlin police officer Herman (John Douglas Thompson), standing 20 feet in the air on a thin rope bridge, frantically asks fellow guard Gunter (Boni B. Alvarez) if they can "have an intermission." After Gunter suggests that he get to the other side of the rope bridge first, Herman cries out that he has to go to the men's room "right now," and drops his trousers. How does Gunter stop this crisis? Only a rendition of "YMCA" will get the petrified Herman in motion.

This immensely amusing scene is just one of the moods evoked in the course of Mee's play, now running at the American Repertory Theatre. "Full Circle" is loosely based on a 13th-century Chinese fable called "The Chalk Circle," but it owes even more to the "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," a play by early 20th century German playwright (and confirmed communist) Bertholt Brecht. Rather than simply updating Brecht's version for a new millennium, however, Mee undermines it by setting his story during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The story centers around the child of Erich Honecker (Alvin Epstein in a brief role), the secretary-general of the Communist party in East Berlin in 1989. When rioters spill into the streets during the bloodless revolution, Honecker is taken prisoner and his wife, hurrying to hide herself, leaves her child with Pamela Dalrymple (Mary Shultz), a New York socialite on tour in East Berlin who is endlessly excited by the revolution around her. Pamela quickly hires a young rioter, Dulle Griet (Mirjana Jokovic), as an au pair for the child, but the two soon find themselves on the run from officers Herman and Gunter.

Most of the play's scenes happen within the context of Pamela and Dulle Griet's flight through Berlin, punctuated by the comic appearances of Herman and Gunter. The sets bounce wildly between a small theater, the columns of a museum, the streets of riot-torn Berlin, a fancy French hotel and a suburban Berlin hovel; the tone of the play changes just as wildly, such as when Dulle Griet gives a heart-felt monologue about what she imagines her "happy life" will be like, punctuated by Pamela's chirpy "Well, you're certainly the strangest girl I've ever met!" While these sudden shifts in tone have the potential to break down the cohesiveness of the play, the result is an effectively surreal experience that emphasizes the differences between the cultural backgrounds and situations of the characters.

The performances are all well-done, from Shultz's perfectly ditzy Dalrymple to Jokovic's young Dulle Griet who grows to love the child she cares for, maturing immeasurably in the process. Also of note is Will LeBow, who turns in a powerful performance as the eternally conflicted German playwright and artistic director Heiner Mller.

At the end of the play, the Chalk Circle is drawn, and the child (a doll) must crawl toward the mother of its choice. But instead of two mothers, we here have three: the rich Pamela, the loving Dulle Griet, and Christa (Laura Knight), the returned biological mother. The play ends on a note of grim irony that seems at odds with the other happy-ending aspects of the conclusion. While the irony has been present throughout, it isn't evident enough at the very end to leave the viewer feeling particularly moved. Nonetheless, the play successfully manages to be both entertaining and intellectual, always something of a challenge in modern theater.