Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Will Von Vogt's performance as Shen Te/Shui Ta anchors this show with heart and panache. He mostly avoids the trap of playing Shen Te as a cloying wide-eyed naif, and though his Shui Ta uses a megaphone at intervals to drive home his points, his real power comes from his steely-eyed stillness and resolve in the face of the squabbling and demanding squatters."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Brecht would have condemned Shui Ta's replacing a homeless shelter with a factory and putting its tenants to work, but in Kushner's universe, the introduction of industry providing jobs for the local population leads to prosperity, awakening in Shen Te's false lover a sense of responsibility toward the woman who will bear his son. Also raising contradictions is Brecht's characterization of a philanthropist as a brutal hypocrite, but whose financial aid, Kushner reminds us, is extended unselfishly, nevertheless. In the play's final moments, when the disenfranchised citizens of Szechwan demand to know what we propose to do about the injustices of the world, it's not like we don't have options."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...Given this provocative, often powerful, play, the uncertain resolution is entertainment enough. By then we're drawn into Brecht's politicized parable, the story of Shen Te, a whore turned tobacco merchant, who discovers that goodness doesn't pay in a capitalist world. No, with a little help from three itinerant and indifferent wandering gods, she learns the cost of charity and the solution: She will develop a male alter ego named Shui Ta, a hard-hearted/headed cousin. Like Brecht's anti-heroine Mother Courage, Shui Ta drives hard bargains and seeks bottom lines. "He" also knows how to evict or employ the assorted parasites, crooks, deadbeats and freeloaders attracted to Shen Te's sudden good fortune."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...When Brecht was writing The Good Person of Szechwan from 1932-1940, Europe was rife with revolutionary ideologies, and Brecht likely believed that asking the right questions of his audience would really result in actionable solutions. More than seventy years later, the only thing we've learned is that the people in Brecht's time never did find any good answers to the problem of sharing resources, and that we're still asking the same questions after all this time could make people feel despair instead of empowered. And yet, several other kinds of discrimination which Nolan's gender-bending, multi-racial production implicitly addresses have undoubtedly gotten much better. Brecht's line of societal interrogation hasn't yielded the results he wanted, but it must be having some positive effect."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...This fine, updated production beautifully honors Bertolt Brecht's unique presentational style, while providing its own contemporary spin on this play. While several actors may want to dial down their volume, often too loud for this tiny venue, Ernie Nolan has done an excellent job of updating the playwright's Epic Drama. Alarie Hammock's costumes are colorful and appropriate, designed for some necessary quick changes. Claire Chrzan's lighting design nicely emphasizes the narrow, brick-lined space and capturing the mood, and Stefin Steberl's set design and props serve the production well. Although this production boasts a dozen talented actors, Brecht's drama reminds us that, in a society where the economy determines its morality, a good man is hard to find."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Under Ernie Nolan's direction, "Good Person" is infused with a soundtrack spanning from boom bap to drill and characters who spit verses between scenes. While the musical interludes functionally illustrate the internal and external struggles of the play, the AABB rhyming pattern and School of Rap intonation never completely coalesce with Brecht's prose. Many of the actors seemed understandably uncomfortable within the rhyming demands of hip-hop, with the noteworthy exception of Jos N. Banks and Dawn Bless whose flows were confident and polished."