THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN. To 2 November.
Scotland
THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN
by Bertolt Brecht Translated by John Willett
TAG Theatre Company Tour to 2 November 2002
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 September at Citizens' Theatre Glasgow
A clear, cool production that could occasionally benefit from more focus.This 'Santa Monica' version is a shortened, simplified edition of his play which Brecht prepared in 1943. Two scenes, five characters and a third of the playing-time were apparently eliminated. It makes the play feasible for a touring company like TAG, whose production has a lot going for it - even if such a lot's gone from the original play.
I find it hard to lament the loss. In this play, unlike its fellow oriental 'parable for the theatre' The Caucasian Chalk Circle the story never gathers momentum and the didactic purpose keeps sticking out like broken bedsprings. With the upfront didactic style of the earlier lehrestucke this is fine, but here the story's being forever grounded by its often repeated concept.
Good-hearted prostitute Shen Te is rewarded by a visiting team of gods inspecting humanity, then has to turn herself into an invented cousin, hard-hearted Shui-Ta to protect herself from exploitation by human rapacity.
Brecht had explored the idea of human personalityas malleable in Man is Man but whatever the confusions in the earlier play it has a momentum lacking here. The point's made long before the play's over.
But between them, Santa Monica and TAG bring clarity and a bearable length. James Brining's production establishes these gods as a team of uninterested bureaucrats, bringing their own clipboard and, in their search for human goodness ending bedraggled and weary. Indeed, Steven Beard's pompous, distant-voiced divine appears unconcerned with their mission from the start.
Molly Innes is the production's motor. After the snap refusals of other Setzuan residents to accommodate the gods, her worried acceptance establishes her lack of means, and the willingness to put her own interests on hold. Brining's brief glimpses of local prostitution at work suggests she's out of place in what's part of the criminal underworld.
Innes has a contrasting expansiveness as Shui-Ta, spreading into an awkward-fitting shiny suit as Shen-Te's pregnancy shows. Her weakness has been to fall for a passing airman - a pilot being a very sexy being in days before mass flight.
Paul Blair brings a qualifying coolness to the role, right up to his descent into drug addiction - sale of the opium 'she' refuses to sell him ironically being Shui-Ta's way to greater profits.
There's plenty of cool about the production - in the Brechtian sense of keeping the audience as conscious observers, not getting caught up in the action. At times it threatens concentration, and a week into the run there seemed several points where there was either ill-judged excess of coolness or mere old-fashioned confusion.
But, on Karen Tennent's flexible set, suggestive of crowding and poverty, the points are made as clearly as they're ever likely to be. And there's good company work, with Callum Cuthbertson notable as the cunning waterseller Wang.
1st God: Steven Beard
Yang Sun: Paul Blair
2nd God: Katherine Connolly
Wang: Callum Cuthbertsun
Shen Te: Molly Innes
3rd God: Helen MacAlpine
Mrs Shin: Jill Riddiford
Policeman: Antony Strachan
Director: James Brining
Designer: Karen Tennent
Lighting: Fleur Woolford
Musical Director: David Young
Movement: Marisa Zanotti
2002-09-22 20:34:39