The Good Woman of Setzuan

The fireworks display of Timothy Mayer's Good Woman of Setzuan isn't quite the conflagration we'd been banking on. Some of the powder is damp, and some poorly packed. But when everything goes off on time, as it fortunately does in most of the play's crucial scenes, the pyrotechnics are well worth watching.

Mayer has placed an enormous burden on his cast, his technical crews and himself, and none of the three is able to sustain it for any protracted length of time. Brecht's play, as Mayer presents it, is a visual extravaganza. For once in a Loeb production the costumes--fiery red for the Gods, warm tans, greens and yellows for everyone else--have some relevance to the set's color scheme. But the set shakes frighteningly. The set, like the ensemble scenes in the first and second acts still needs a few day's work.

Brecht's story is simple. A trio of God's in search of good people are introduced by a water seller (Steve Kaplan) to Shen Te (Trish Archer) a prostitute who is a good people. The Gods pay her for their night's lodging with enough money to start a small tobacco shop. Screaming freeloaders move in; she falls in love with a worthless unemployed flyer; her every good deed brings ruin. To save herself, she invents a businesslike, ruthless alter ego, Shui Ta, who is successful and dastardly. How to reconcile goodness and survival? Shen Te can't manage it, nor can the bumbling gods.

Mayer seems to have captured in his mind both the humor of the play and the dark question underneath, it but as of yet, he hasn't gotten it all onstage. Mayer, as always, has orchestrated constant movement for his actors, individually and ensemble. But his cast swears awfully hard following his directions.

The stage movement works best in small, humorous scenes like the early one of the itching, scratching, sneezing, retching freeloaders in Shen Te's tobacco store, and in the finale when a congregation of riffraff salutes the gods with raised mop as the "illustrious ones" fly away on a winch-raised cloud.

But when the actors can't control their movement, the effect is alternately annoying and absurd. Dan Deitch as Yang Sun, the unemployed flyer, just tries to do too much with his body. He contorts across the stage, face grimacing and body tensed. Everyone knows that Yang is a bastard, so Shen Te's love for him can only be based on sheer sex appeal. Deitch, by equating gruffness and stiff limbs with masculinity makes his appeal to Shen Te incomprehensible.

The two actors who are always in control are Kaplan and Miss Archer. Kaplan's Wong has a strongly Yiddish flavor, much like Sholom Alcichem's dairyman Tevye before Broadway got to him. But the resemblance--the good humor in despair, the pleading with the marvelously impotent gods, the befuddled good intentions--is in Brecht's script as well as Kaplan's portrayal. Miss Archer has warmth, a versatile vocal range, the ability to switch swiftly between the two parts she must play, and good legs.

The songs are the show's weakest point. The orchestra is under-rehearsed and shoddy, and only Kaplan appears to have a voice. Deitch, in two songs, twisted through the jagged motions Mayer gave him, clearly listening to a different drummer. Mayer's conception is strong, his control is weak. Good Woman is a brilliant show that still needs rehearsal. Wait a week.