A human being, Bertolt Brecht once wrote, is the sum of his social circumstances. In mounting Brecht’s great 1943 drama The Good Person of Szechwan, Cor Theatre has managed, against all odds, to create a world in which social circumstances barely exist.
In true parable fashion, the social circumstances in Szechwan are simple and straightforward: poverty abounds and goods are in short supply, making everything costly and poverty worse (not coincidentally, Brecht wrote the play in exile from Germany as World War II raged). Nolan hopes to duplicate these circumstances on what appears to be a particularly dicey New York City block, where petty thieves, officious landlords, small business owners, streetwalkers, cross-dressers, and hustlers collide. The effort to contemporize Brecht’s world is thorough, from the street fashions the characters wear to the cell phone Shui Ta wields. All of the numerous songs in the play (some interpolated from other of Brecht’s works) are redone as hip-hop.
Through 9/11: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 866-811-4111, cortheatre.org, $25, $10 students.
