To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the first performance of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith is an ideal home with its aim of reinventing classics. Boldly translated by Nina Segal, and directed by Anthony Lau, this rendition is surreal, emotionally unsettling, and powerful! True to Brecht’s convention of theatre, but ripped off its extreme didacticism, the creative team should take a bow for cohesively repositioning the production with oomph and wonder.
The play begins with Wang, the water seller (Leo Wan) prancing in a swim-suit and flippers, mocking the city-dwellers and their stupidity in paying money for a free resource like water as he waits for the Gods (Nick Blakeley, Callum Coates, Tim Samuels) who appear in pristine white toga outfits which get muddied as the play progresses. Their mission is to locate one good person to save Earth from a fierce apocalypse. Recognising Shen Te (AMI TREDREA), a sex worker to be good enough, they gift her 1000 dollars to kickstart her business, only to corrupt her further, and ask Wang to monitor her goodness. As the play progresses and Shen Te’s wealth is exploited by everyone around her, she is forced to don an alter-ego, her cousin Shui Ta who, who uses immoral, corrupt ways to ensure her survival in a highly capitalistic world.
The world of the play is brilliantly and complexly articulated using Brecht’s principles of alienation but tearing its naturalistic feel entirely, reducing the didactic impact. The city of Szechwan, boldly designed by Georgia Lowe resembles an animated video game with a hot-pink stage surrounded by two slides on either end and a black pathway on the edge of the stage, probably a polluted river filled with black softballs. The centre stage is occupied diversely, first by a giant paddling pool with plastic bottles, then a giant claw machine with cigarettes (Shen Te’s tobacco shop) and later by a giant cigarette (Shui Ta’s tobacco factor). As the corruption increases, the set grows from small to big, poor to rich, and moral to immoral. The stage is flanked by long cylindrical white tubes which produce light to support scene changes, later transforming into cigarette butts. Further, the archetypal characters with symbolic costuming, karaoke music by DJ Walde portraying the manipulative internal contrivances of characters, flashy light design by Jessica Hung Han Yun, the occasional appearance of full-sized rat and frog, and balls swung at audiences, all ensure that the viewers are neither fully indulging nor fully disengaging from the play, successfully producing Brecht’s alienation effect.
Tredrea skilfully played a stark contrast in physicality and tone, as she shifted from Shen Te to Shui Ta. The speed of the play is highly engaging! The choice of an all-white cast of Gods struggling to survive on Earth after giving away their resources reverses the arguably problematic Brechtian representation of setting the play in a Chinese city. Moments of emotional connection between Wang and Shen Te, and her love for the pilot (Melody Brown) add hope to an otherwise materialistic world.
What I did miss was an emotional graph in the first half which was jaded by an extreme, noisy, all-out performance by the cast. It certainly swung me to the other end where I felt more distanced and less invested. The second half fully redeemed the play creating a fine balance between indulgence and empathy, allowing me to be critically present, questioning what being good truly means and how it is affected by the economic laws of society at any given time which is the ultimate intent of a Brechtian play.
A good play accompanies you outside of the theatre halls, and this one certainly did! You can catch this play at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre till 13th May 2023. https://lyric.co.uk/shows/the-good-person-of-szechwan/
Reviewer: Khushboo Shah
Reviewed: 20th April 2023
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★