207. THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Stephen Elliott, Elizabeth Wilson, David Birney, Colleen Dewhurst.

THE GOOD WOMAN OF SETZUAN [Dramatic Revival] A: Bertolt Brecht; TR: Ralph Manheim; D: Robert Symonds; S: Douglas W. Schmidt; C: Carrie F. Robbins; L: John Gleason; M: Herbert Pilhofer; P: Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center; T: Vivian Beaumont Theatre; 11/5/70-12/13/70 (46)

Lou Gilbert, David Brney, Colleen Dewhurst  Elizabeth Wilson, Stephen Elliott, Priscilla Pointer, Philip Bosco, Sydney Walker.

Even the casting of Colleen Dewhurst, one of the leading stage players of her time, in the role of Shen Teh could not noticeably improve the generally dull quality of the Lincoln Center company’s production of Brecht’s parable play about the nature of good and evil. Set in a Chinese city, the work was presented in a bland presentation that was met with almost unanimously bored responses. Critics like Stanley Kauffmann and Richard Watts were unimpressed by the play’s dry, unaffecting, placidly ironic personality.  The direction of Robert Symond, one the company’s leading actors, was too dreary to paint the show with even a hint of theatrical spirit.

Colleen Dewhurst, David Birney, Priscilla Pointer.

The interpretation, noted Clive Barnes, was overly realistic, insufficiently theatricalized, musically deficient, and heavy-handedly translated. Its performances seemed dead, according to Walter Kerr, and the revival was yet another example of the American theatre’s failure to do Brecht justice.

Dewhurst’s notices were disappointing. Kauffmann stated that she played her role (which requires the actor to play two contrasting personalities, one generous, the other rapacious) by alternating “between Joan of Arc . . . and a ‘camp’ gangster,” an approach that failed to provide her with the “comic-ironic tension” she presumably sought. A rare positive view belonged to Barnes, who noted that Dewhurst “had just the right radiance as the good woman, and . . . [she] also captured the impersonality of the alter ego, Shui Ta.

The very large cast also counted among its members Lou Gilbert, Philip Bosco, Sydney Walker, Ray Fry, Elizabeth Wilson, Robert Phalen, Dan Sullivan, Elizabeth Huddle, Frances Foster, and Tandy Cronyn, most of them regular members of the Lincoln Center Company. On the other hand, Dewhurst was not, being an outside star jobbed in for the occasion. 

This was the play’s first revival locally since its New York premiere at Off Broadway’s Phoenix Theatre in 1959.