New production of Brecht classic The Good Person of Szechwan at Sheffield Crucible

There aren’t many directors who would have Kung Fu Hustle and Bojack Horseman as reference points for a Brecht production, but Lau, Dundee-born of Chinese heritage, has a cultural palette that’s broadened by his experience as the child of immigrants.

Lau is The Regional Theatre Young Director in post as associate artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, second in command to Robert Hastie. Last year Lau put Anna Karenina on the stage of the Crucible, this year he turns his attention to Brecht. “I have had this as an idea in the back of my mind for a few years now. We went with Anna Karenina last year because it felt like this needed a little more time. We then found out that the English Touring Theatre had commissioned Nina Segal to write this new version and when we spoke it was clear we shared a viewpoint on the play and what it meant to be doing a Brechtian play in 2023,” says Lau.

The Good Person of Szechwan tells the story of three gods searching for a single honest person on earth to justify the existence of humanity. Finding the principled but penniless Shen Te, they reward her with a huge amount of money. Starting her own business in a money-centred, unequal society, her fortune soon turns to frustration as the more kindness she shows, the more complicated life becomes.

Lau describes the play as ahead of its time and perfect for our time. “It’s a play that tackles the cost of living crisis,” he says. “It’s about the cost of being good and about the fact that it’s easy perhaps to be selfish and the questions around what that means for us as a society is perhaps more pressing than ever before.”More pressing than ever before, but Lau says he isn’t going to be hemmed in by the play’s big ideas.

“Big ideas and concepts can be unwieldy, so we are always asking ‘how do we present this to the audience?’. I studied Brecht as a teenager and it can be frustrating to watch these plays through a slightly retro lens, as they were presented when I saw them. It should be exciting,” he says. “We really are reimagining what Brecht is about and how his plays can be made. I’m very influenced by the films that were coming out of Hong Kong in the 70s and 80s, the films I grew up with. A big reference point is also a movie like Kung Fu Hustle, that elastic physicality combined with comedy all set around a story where people are trying to make a living while struggling against capitalism. It’s fun and serious and felt like a really useful cultural touchstone.”

If you haven’t seen Kung Fu Hustle, first of all it’s well worth a watch, but it's the kind of movie that comes out of a specific tradition where reality and realism can sit alongside the fantastical quite happily.

“Brecht was making work at a time when he was responding to and against a naturalism in theatre,” says Lau. “He believed you should pursue truth but not at the expense of the idea. If you look at something like Roger Rabbit or Austin Powers, they are doing the same thing, they are character driven stories with emotional truth at their heart, but they are performed in a way to create distance, which feels incredibly Brechtian.”

It is unusual to hear a theatre director quote a movie in which Bob Hoskins stars opposite an animated rabbit, but if you examine what Lau is saying, it makes perfect sense. It’s exactly what Brecht was also doing. “As far as we know, this is the first time the play has been performed by an entire South East Asian cast, which feels really important,” says Lau. “It’s taking time, but we now feel like we are at a place where things are changing and we’re now getting a multiplicity of voices – although we want more.”

Sheffield Crucible, March 11-April 1.