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Nowhere in this Public Theater "revival" of Lear DeBessonet's hit La MaMa production from earlier this year do you ever find exactly what you expect. Traditional Chinese formal dress coexisting with modern aviator gear. Staunch realism rubbing shoulders with expressionism. American folk music floods your ears one second, stage-filling musical-theatre brass the next, and caterwauling silence a moment later. It's a complete clash of concepts, with the past and the present colliding with the real factual imaginary so frequently that you might fear being reduced to a bloody pulp by the crossfire. But for a Bertolt Brecht play, this dissonance adds to, rather than detracts from, the experience. By keeping you on your (figurative) toes and on the (quite possibly literal) edge of your seat, you're never able to become comfortably involved with its story about the gods' search for a genuinely "good" person—let alone the strain trying to achieve that ideal puts on those who attempt it, and, for that matter, the danger it puts them in. DeBessonet, in a valiant attempt to live up to Brecht, keeps you as distant as she reasonably can. DeBessonet fails only in the sense that, as the evening unfolds and her bag of tricks keeps expanding and yielding new surprises, you become even more excited about—and invested in—seeing where she takes things next. (There are, admittedly, worse problems for any director to have.) But she defies the odds and maintains this rigidly organized jumble until the lights come down for the final time, and you're forced to investigate, chew on, and (hopefully) swallow the 87-course meal that's been prepared. This Good Person of Szechwan is one of the most fulfilling productions of 2013 because all of its elements are so supremely in sync. Brecht's play starts from the acknowledgment of the Jekyll-and-Hyde duality of humanity, as personified by Shen Te and her, ahem, cousin Shui Ta, whose different approaches to life and work all but cancel out each other. Neither, it seems, may naturally abide the other, and the closer the gods come to finding the avatar they seek, the heavier the demands on the mortal Shen Te become. Before long, this affects her public standing—she is, at the outset, one of the original prostitutes with a heart of gold—and comes to threaten her burgeoning relationship with the pilot Yang Sun and even her life. And as Shui Ta rises to power, becoming the increasingly dictatorial ruler of a huge factory (where, not so surprisingly, Yang Sun ends up), what's happened to both of them, and what it means for the community and the world at large, become central issues no one can escape.
You can't, however, ignore Taylor Mac, who's devastating as Shen Te. He brings both an alarming innocence and an unshakable confidence to the role, qualities that resolve into equal intensity whether the put-upon Shen Te or the brow-beating Shui Ta is in charge. With a sterling physical comedy sense (which comes into its own in the second act) and serious musical chops (his performance of the song in which Shen Te transforms into Shui Ta is a stunning highlight), he's as substantial an anchor as DeBessonet's vision could hope to have found. But the rest of the cast is almost as good, with David Turner displaying his own showstopping tendencies as an especially wry Water Seller, Clifton Duncan as a deeply likeable Yang Sun, and Lisa Kron (whose musical Fun Home is playing elsewhere at The Public right now) vanishing into the roles of Shen Te's landlady and Yang Sun's brayingly Brooklyn mother. As the trio of shimmering, white-clad gods, Vinie Burrows, Mia Katigbak, and Mary Shultz prove without effort that, in the theatre, less is frequently more. Granted, that's not necessarily true with this Good Person of Szechwan—here, it's instead more that's more. But, DeBessonet has gone about it the right way, and never loads down the play or you with an unbearable burden. She's done what more directors should do: given Brecht everything he needs. And while you're watching the result it's tough to think of what more you could possibly want.
Good Person of Szechwan
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