From a position of enormous popularity in the 1970s, Bertolt Brecht's reputation suffered a precipitous decline as the fall of the Berlin Wall exposed the moral bankruptcy of the worker's paradise to which he professed his loyalty.
A widespread revival of fortune seems unlikely but ATC's vigorous production of one of his major works affirms that Brecht was a writer of enormous vitality and the blinkered ideological commitments cannot obscure his passionate engagement with the extremes of the human condition.
The Good Soul of Szechuan presents a thoroughly contemporary take on the age-old question of whether there is enough goodness remaining within humanity to justify our continued existence.
Plunging us into a seething globalised shanty town the design team has collaborated closely in an eclectic, grunge aesthetic with John Parker creating a swirling mass of corrugated iron rising above the detritus of consumer society.
