The Good Soul of Szechuan

Published Thursday 15 May 2008 at 11:35 by Heather Neill

Crossing the stage through clouds of “cement” dust, past workers shifting sacks of the stuff, the audience enters another world in Miriam Buether’s theatre-transforming set. Yet this is not mimicked reality but the setting for a parable.

Brecht’s discussion of the difficulty of living a good life under capitalism is given a fresh slant in David Harrower’s American-tinged reworking which follows Brecht’s 1943 revision. As ever, gods visiting the earth looking for one good person discover Shen Te, a kindly Chinese prostitute. They give her money with which she buys a tabacconist’s shop, but when her generosity is exploited she invents a tougher alter ego, a male cousin, Shui Ta. She falls in love with a cheat and, pregnant, flourishes by pretending to be Shui Ta. Here, business success relies on heroin as well as tobacco, so capitalism is explicitly equated with crime. Yet the overall effect now has as much to do with the muddle of human nature as economics: - the two complete each other. Even when Shui Ta is in the ascendant, Shen Te leaves rice out for the poor.

Jane Horrocks is a wispy figure with great presence. Childlike in the beginning, she is actually more convincing as the nastier cousin. But, given her previous big-voice successes in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Cabaret, her singing seems oddly thin. In Richard Jones’ production, true Brechtian gutsiness manifests itself in a couple of choral numbers, especially The Song of St Nevercome’s Day in which “pigs will fly” when the poor flourish.  

Afterwards, the irony of “kind” western theatregoers parting with a few coins to help the destitute in stricken Szechuan added a poignant twist.