Cal Shakes does well with ‘Good Person’ morality tale
Unhappy is the land that is in need of heroes, as Bertolt Brecht once wrote. His words resonate just as keenly in our world today as they do in the shadowy realm of “The Good Person of Szechwan.”
Eric Ting’s rollicking production of this 1943 parable of good and evil marks the first time that California Shakespeare Theater has staged a Brecht play. It’s a welcome addition to the Shakespeare theater’s canon and the director, who’s also Cal Shakes’ artistic director, approaches the material with a cheeky sense of the postmodern as well as an affinity for Brecht’s zeal for political change.
While the three-hour production can be challenging as well as long, there are many interludes where the dark parody reaches the level of the sublime.
Framed by Michael Locher’s exquisite set, its giant flashing letters spelling out “Good” like a post-apocalyptic ruin from a once-great civilization, Tony Kushner’s robust adaptation of the classic is certainly as bracing as the winds that can blow through Cal Shakes’ Bruns Amphitheater when night falls.
Three gods have landed on Earth, ordered to find one good person left on the planet. Sadly, the only human who will give them the time of day is the lowly water seller Wang (Lance Gardner). He tries to help them find a place to spend the night, only none of the city’s upstanding citizens has any faith. Only the young prostitute Shen Te (Francesca Fernandez McKenzie) will share her hovel with the deities, even if it costs her a client. They reward her with a sum of money and she foolishly believes her troubles are at an end.
Alas, when Shen Te buys a little tobacco shop, it is immediately threatened by voracious creditors, beggars and landlords. Realizing she will soon be reduced to life on the street once more, she dresses up like a man: Enter the ruthless Shui Ta. The bowler-clad businessman is willing to do whatever must be done to save the shop. McKenzie is superb as the character slips in and out of the male persona, reveling in the man’s ability to be callous in a world where cash is king. As herself, Shen Te is all too giving, readily surrendering herself to those who seem vulnerable, like Yang Sun (Armando McClain), the pilot without a plane.
What the fable lacks in subtlety, Ting often makes up for with the delight of surprise. Chaplinesque humor mingles with paradigm shifts here. The sharpest points in this staging are the gutsy juxtapositions of form. Shen Te busts out with a hip-hop number. Anthony Fusco plays an unemployed man as if he were The Dude from “The Big Lebowski.” The first act also contains placards, a signature Brecht flourish, saying things like “Brecht never went to China,” which may explain the lack of authenticity in the narrative.
Universal satire is the mission here. Brecht wrote the play while in exile from Germany as World War II raged. On the run from the Nazis with his Jewish wife, he had little time for nuance. He meant to expose the impossibility of being ethical in a world riddled with cruelty where capitalism has run amok.
While there are points when the actors don’t navigate the line between character and caricature perfectly, some of the jokes don’t land and the production can drag, there are also times when tragedy and comedy breathe as one. Phil Wong has a ball as the doughy Barber who viciously beats beggars but pretends to be a philanthropist so he can ensnare Shen Te. J Jha makes cross-gender casting both believable and hilarious as the bearded landlady Mi Tzu, who sashays around town like a shark looking for prey.
All of these characters are on the make at all times. In the epilogue, sensitively delivered by Gardner despite some trouble on opening night with the lines, “Good” asks us to judge ourselves as harshly as we might the characters onstage.