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'Good Person' Rehearsals Going Strong

'Good Person' Rehearsals Going Strong image
Parent Issue
Ann Arbor News, December 17, 1978
Article Author
Norman Gibson
Day
17
Month
December
Year
1978
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

At This Stage

by Norman Gibson

‘Good Person’ rehearsals going strong

When Ann Arbor Civic Theatre vice-president Carol Deniston read Berthold Brecht’s "The Good Person of Szechwan,” she couldn’t believe there was so little to it.

Then she saw what director Klauss Bergmann was doing to it in rehearsals that go on nightly at the Civic Theatre Workshop Building, 201 Mulholland.

Bergmann is the perceptive and imaginitive director who received the “Best Play” award for the first production he directed for Civic Theatre.

HE WAS hailed for his production of “Anastasia,” about the mysterious Russian princess who disappeared after that country’s revolution.

Bergmann now has taken on Brecht’s parable in which the gods come to this world to find if their commandment that "above all, let there be good” is obeyed.

It takes place in a city where mankind is exploited.

THIS IS a type of play that can be done as a fairy tale and Bergmann reportedly is taking this approach.

It’s a drama with musical accompaniment, and some roles have singing.

AACT was slightly apprehensive about doing the drama because it is something of a laudable departure from the group’s usual fare.

CIVIC THEATRE is putting all its available resources into the production, signing the theater-wise Roger Wertenberger as producer and Fran Stewart as assistant director.

Rich Freelund is designing the set and Barbara Mostaghin the costumes.

Bergmann has assembled a cast that includes several with years of acting experience and some who are appearing here for the first time.

THE VETERANS are G. Alexander Miller as Want, Bob Gatske as the first god, Constance Barron as Shen Teh-Shui Ta, Jim Kane as Lin To the carpenter, Ed Lesher as the grandfather, Peter Greenquist as Shu Fu Barber and Dwight Smith as the priest.

New to the Civic Theatre stage are George Tsiros, the second god. Bob Mueting, the third god and the waiter, Ed Stein, Young Sun, Edna Williams, Mrs. Wang, Aliza Shevrin, the widow Shin, Kathy Butler, the woman, Kenneth Parada, the husband, Sandra Hudson, the sister-in-law, David Barick, the brother, Monica Pignotti, the neice, Larry Segal, the nephew, Marilyn Kennedy, Mi Tzu, Michael Gos, the policeman, George Lavdas, the carpet dealer, Margaret Massialas, the carpet dealer’s wife, Thelma Sterling, the old prostitute, Al Hainen, the unemployed man, Anahid Avsharian, the five-year-old, and David Kennedy, the nine-year-old.

Brecht’s play won’t be presented until Jan. 10 through 15 in the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater but rehearsals on going strong because the cast will take a week’s break for Christmas and New Year’s.