Every time I go into a theater and see that I’m the youngest person there, my heart sinks. I’ve written about my frustration in the past; I know that one of the most pressing challenges facing the performing arts today is the lack of new, young, non-traditional audiences in seats. What will it take to get the Twittering, Facebooking, I-Pading generation used to jumpcuts, flash-forwards, I-Tunes downloads, and multi-media displays to see live theater, especially the dramatic classics? Although there are no easy answers (and this blog post will not attempt to go down that rabbit hole at this time), I’m sure they will not be traditionally-staged Cherry Orchards or Cymbelines or Beckett plays that are mandated to adhere to the play as written. That’s why I find it really thrilling and heartening when a production such as Strawdog Theater’s take on Bertolt Brecht’s classic 1940s indictment of capitalism and a perfect example of Epic Theater, The Good Soul of Szechuan, comes along. Using Blackbird author David Harrower’s edgy, colloquial, contemporary translation, and staged like a house party by director Shade Murray with energetic performances and vibrant musical numbers that span the gamut of musical genres from folk to indie rock, this Good Soul makes Brecht’s pungent, sometimes overly didactic points about materialism, greed, the blackness of the human heart, and the lack of rewards for the virtuous, written more than 60 years ago, stingingly relevant to our 21st century world that is continuously outraged by Wall Street bonuses, movie and sports star contracts, real estate shenanigans, and the collapse of mismanaged national economies.
The prostitute with the glittery heart of gold, Shen Te, is the only good soul in Szechuan, as anointed by three somewhat ditzy gods that she gave shelter to during their one-night visit to the town. As a reward for her virtue, and an encouragement for her to continue on living a life of goodness, the gods give her enough money to set up a tobacco shop. In Brecht’s cynical view of the world, having money doesn’t pay (pun intended) since it brings out all sorts of avaricious freeloaders, including former landlords and their extended families, gossipy neighbors, and sweet-talking boys who say they love you but really just need your money to bribe people to give them a job. In order to protect herself, Shen Te creates a fictional male cousin, Shui Ta, who is brutal, corrupt, drug-dealing, basically the inverse of the good soul of Szechuan, and she finds herself becoming more and more like him as the play progresses. No one really thinks that one of Brecht’s strengths is subtlety, so there’s a lot of obvious, unambiguous, monochromatically shaded playwriting business about how money is bad, and how people are basically wicked and deceitful and will take advantage of each other. But Harrower’s adaptation and Murray’s confident, clear-eyed direction raise interesting, contemporaneous questions from the decades-old text: is self-preservation, to some extent or another, our overarching motivation for doing anything? Does self-preservation bring out the capacity for mean, ungracious acts in even the kindliest, most well-meaning people? As we read headline stories from New York to Athens to our own sweet hometown of Chicago, these questions resonate.
But this Strawdog production is no dry, meandering, college lecture-hall Brecht. As you enter the theater, the cast is already in full-on, rockin’ mode, playing live instruments and singing a wide variety of songs (including, on the night I went, a surprisingly catchy version of Petula Clark’s “Downtown”) even before the show starts. Music plays a pivotal, vital role in this production, and the invaluable and brilliant Mike Pryzgoda (who is also such an essential element of the success of the Hyprocrites’ Cabaret, re-arranging the brassy Kander and Ebb showtunes in surprisingly folksy, or jazzy, or emo-rocky sort of ways) has written original songs incorporating Brecht’s dialogue in a dizzying array of musical styles- rock, folk, R and B, Broadway showtuney. And the large cast throw themselves enthusiastically into them, both singing and playing instruments, and most importantly, looking like they’re having boatloads of fun (“fun” in Brecht? Wow!). Strawdog ensemble member Michaela Petro as the cross-dressing Shen Te/Shui Ta is, in my opinion, giving one of the must-see performances in this Chicago theater season: funny, heartbreaking, graceful, sexy, musically vibrant, always believable as both characters, but, in the great Brechtian Epic Theater tradition, also skillfully in on the joke that this is all an overflowing stew of stylized performance, and not naturalism or realism. She gets able support from other folks in the ensemble such as Shannon Hoag as the marvelously hilarious busybody neighbor Mrs. Shin, Carmine Grisolia as the skeezy yet sympathetic water seller Wang (and he performs one of the best show-stopping musical numbers of the night), and The History Boys’ Will Allan in a variety of ensemble roles, but most memorably as a blustery Carpenter that comes to collect money from Shen Te.
This production isn’t perfect – it runs a little too long, there’s some inconsistency in performance styles among the large ensemble, and Brecht’s constant exhortations become quite ponderous towards the end. But this Good Soul is the kind of theater that I like to advocate for on this blog: it is theater that connects and engages, and clarifies and compels a classic text for a 21st century audience member. Together with the Hypocrites’ Cabaret, it’s, IMHO, one of the two major productions of the late spring 2010 theater season, storefront or not. (Which leads me to a frustrating observation about the theater coverage of Chicago’s two major newspapers: neither Chris Jones nor Hedy Weiss, the chief theater critics of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times respectively, reviewed Cabaret or The Good Soul of Szechuan. With Chris jetting off to New York City and reviewing American Idiot and seven other Broadway shows in April, and Hedy filing reports on Moscow’s urban transformation, I’m concerned, as a passionate Chicago theatergoer, about where our newspapers’ critical priorities lie. I care reading about the great work that Chicago theaters are doing on our newspapers’ theater pages, not about Broadway shows or the state of Russian department stores. What do you, my dear blog readers, care about?)
Please show that you know your theatrical priorities by rushing out to see The Good Soul of Szechuan, at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway. It’s running till May 29.
Tags: Strawdog Theatre Company
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