John Doyle has created a mess of a production. It is played for comedy and not in a clever way. He seems to have taken the view that audiences are unintelligent and have a very limited attention span. Many of the people sitting around me left after the 1st act. I stayed to be beaten over the head by the director’s penchant for breaking the 4th wall. The singing and especially the guitar playing was terrible. I kept having visions of John Belushi in Animal House grabbing the guitar from Stephen Bishop and smashing it to bits. The coup de grace was the chain link fence that kept going up and down at the front of the stage.

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I had high hopes for this play, after seeing Sweeney Todd, and knowing that this is one of the most famous plays by Brecht. What a disappointment. I understand that the contemporary/ minimalist take was intentional, it was not what I expected, in a negative way I have to say. The whole performance felt like a dress rehearsal, no, not even a dress rehearsal. More like one of the regular rehearsals in which the actors dress in street clothes, use whatever handy as props, and still searching for ways to deliver their lines. The acting is just not emotionally (if there's any) convincing. So I sat through almost two hours watching the actors play with pillows and megaphones, hoping for, at least, a good finish on the namesake climax. Come on people, the play is called Chalk Circle, at least do the namesake a little bit of justice! Ugh no, such a letdown, such a letdown on such high-school quality delivery. This one definitely ranked as the worst I have ever seen at ACT. Definitely make me think twice whether or not to continue to see their plays.

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Very bad production. Nothing to do with Brecht's message

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I was surprised and delighted to see such a daring production at ACT. From the first, the visual images created by the set were striking and thought-provoking, and the actors' excellent performances were exactly in line with this vision. The singing and instrument-playing were certainly unpolished, but I found this to be appropriate to the wartime scenario, and the feeling of scrabbling together a performance with the materials at hand. Overall, I found it to be a very cohesive and excellently realized production, and quite compelling to watch.

As others have said, it's not a production for everyone, but for those desiring something out of the ordinary, I highly recommend it.

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