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Sichuan and Salome
| Article
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18354 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
2,294 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
Der gute Mensch von Sezuan was translated by Michael Hoffmann for Deborah Warner's production at London's National Theatre, as The Good Person of Sichuan. Warner is hailed as something of a young lioness among the new crop of directors. She says she does not like to do contemporary plays very much, because “the themes are not big enough.” This exception to her rule is justified by a reference to the Waterloo street people who sleep in cardboard boxes under concrete walkways near the National Theatre. Warner says they have inspired her and fit in with her wish to find “great expressions of the human heart.” For thematic reasons, which I will come to later, her statement seems both blockheaded and cruel, and it may explain the dreadful mess that she and her translator - abetted by composer Dominic Muldowney - have made of the play.
The action is straightforward: Three Gods come to Sichuan in search of a good person. They find Shen Te, a whore addicted to a lethally pure form of generosity. This tart-with-a-heart is given some money by the Gods. She buys a tobacco shop and is promptly inundated with greedy, ill-tempered spongers, plus a grasping and selfish lover. Faced with ruin, she masks herself as “cousin” Shui Ta - a tough cookie who gets rid of the schnorrers and the lover and makes the tobacco business flourish (in this production Warner incorporates a bit of extra nonsense which Brecht added in America, making the tobacco into opium; it does not help much). Made pregnant by her lover, Shen Te has trouble keeping up the “cousin” disguise, and - in the role of Shui Ta - finds herself accused by the spongers and the lover of murdering her real, generous self.
The Final Trial
This leads to a final trial, judged by the Gods; the court is cleared, and Shen Te exposes her double role to the Gods. Unwilling to condemn the good person they have found, they wag their fingers, make excuses, and tell her not to be the bad cousin too often. Then they ascend to heaven again, uttering Panglossian banalities. There is an epilogue, not used in this production, in which Brecht acknowledges the weakness of his silly ending. In proper lehrstuck fashion he addresses the audience:
Soll es ein andrer menschsein?
Oder eine andre Welt?…
Verehrtes Publikum, los, such
dir selbst den Schluss!
Warner sets the
...
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