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‘Good Person,’ good play
(by Bob Wilcox - April 29, 2009)
St. Louis has recently seen two fine productions of plays by Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright of the first half of the 20th century whose work is now more often admired than performed. An acknowledged genius, Brecht was also an odd duck.
He had good reason to be an odd duck. He endured some of the worst experiences of a bad century. After serving as an orderly in a World War I army hospital, lopping off limbs of injured soldiers, his first plays displayed the nihilism and cynicism engendered by war and the chaos of post-war Germany.
As the economic situation in Germany deteriorated, Brecht found a ray of hope in the ideas of Karl Marx and the Communist Party. But before he could do much theatrically with these ideas, Hitler came to power, and Brecht fled to the heart of the capitalist entertainment world, Los Angeles.
In exile, in no position to have any direct influence on the political life of a country, Brecht wrote what are generally considered to be his greatest plays. One of them, Mother Courage and Her Children, just concluded a run at Washington University in a very smart production directed by William Whitaker, with a powerful performance by Kaylin Boosalis as Mother Courage.
Now St. Louis Actors’ Studio has joined with the theater department at St. Louis University to produce another, The Good Person of Setzuan, again with smart work by the director, Milt Zoth, and a powerful performance in the leading role by Kari Ely.
Brecht theorized that in order to get his points across audience members should remain emotionally detached from the play and examine calmly and coolly the flawed society he showed them on his stage. With such theories Brecht tried to salve his Marxist conscience and justify devoting his life to the frivolous world of the theater.
But he’d started his career singing in cabarets and coffeehouses. He remained an entertainer at heart who knew that he had to hold an audience by any means. Audiences like exotic settings, so he figured, “Let’s go to China.” Lou Bird’s costumes mix Western and Chinese, but Jim Burwinkel’s set could rightly be a rag-draped slum anywhere.
And just try to remain detached in the touchingly written scene (as adapted by Tony Kushner in this production) in which Ely’s reformed prostitute Shen Te falls in love in the rain with the air-mail pilot Sun, played with Larry Dell’s usual authority. Try not to be touched by Shen Te when she imagines playing with the child she’s going to have. Do your best to not admire the dogged determination of David Wassilak’s Wang the water carrier.
Brecht can’t help himself. We care for his characters.
But he is able to distance us from them in the way playwrights always have, by making them comic. The three fatuous gods who come seeking a good person, led by a laughably oblivious Robert Ashton, easily make Brecht’s point about the ridiculous logic of conventional morality. In fact, Brecht gets heavy-handed in reminding us that in our present society one can’t both prosper and be a good person — you need a shrewd corner-cutter to bail you out.
In a mixed cast of professionals and students, some play with more assurance than others, but the core of the production is solid. You can enjoy — yes, Brecht, enjoy — the Actors’ Studio-St. Louis University production of The Good Person of Setzuan through May 3 in the campus’s Xavier Hall. Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com and by calling (800) 982-2787.
Bob Wilcox also reviews theater for KDHX-FM, 88.1, and for Two on the Aisle on cable and on line at kdhx.org.
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