By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — According to the program notes for The Good Person Of New Haven, the current offering at Long Wharf Theatre, Bill Rauch and Alison Carey’s Cornerstone Theater Company spent 12 years traveling across the country devising plays “custom-tailored for isolated and divided communities” before settling permanently in Los Angeles.

In 1997, Long Wharf commissioned the company to develop a piece about New Haven. After meetings with leaders from various parts of the community they settled on a localized version of Bertolt Brecht’s satirical parable, The Good Woman of Szechuan. A series of workshops and auditions led to the selection of some two dozen New Havenites to play a variety of supporting roles.

The players range from middle schoolers like Christopher Dickerson and Mike Gaetano to great-grandfather Stephen J. Papa, who has, among other things, been Santa on New Haven’s Green since 1945. The enthusiasm with which they capture the particular flavor of their town is joyously infectious.

In the 1943 original, set in the Szechuan province of China, a poor water seller meets three gods who have come down to Earth in search of a human being who is innately good enough to justify allowing the world to continue. The only person they can find who is willing to help three strangers is a poor prostitute.

The next morning they explain who they are and, as a reward for her kindness, give her enough money to buy a little tobacco shop so that she can leave her profession and become a respectable businesswoman. But, they enjoin her, keep on being the good kind person that you are.

Unfortunately, once she opens her store she is beset by a seemingly infinite parade of deadbeat relatives and hangers on, all of whom demand assistance — food, money, a place to stay — making it impossible for her to make a living.

In desperation she disguises herself as a man, pretending to be her fierce and dangerous cousin from out of town. He is so intimidating that no one argues when he makes strict and selfish decisions.

In Alison Carey’s updated version, the water seller has become a homeless street person collecting soda cans in a shopping cart. The trio of visiting gods are angel-tourists, dressed in Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts and running shoes, with matching crewcuts and black plastic glasses that make them look like clones of Drew Carey. The “good woman of Szechuan” has become Tyesha Shore, a prostitute whose dream of upward mobility is to buy a “mini-mart” convenience store from an Asian woman, Mrs Shin.

With a cast made up of ten Equity professionals as well as the local performing artists, the play follows the moral progress of this pilgrim as she grapples with the realization that it is impossible to both do good and survive.

Using combinations of realistic props and inventively imagined background, the company suggests a broad variety of local settings: the New Haven Green, a mini-mart, a laundromat, an Italian restaurant, Yale, various street corners, a sweat shop, under the highway, and so forth. The supporting characters convey the essence of the Elm City, constantly changing costumes to cross socio-economic boundaries, going from being homeless, to Yalies, to yuppies, to the working poor.

The show is a musical; most Brecht plays are, the most famous of which being The Three Penny Opera. The music was written by Cornerstone resident composer Shishir Kurup, but the six songs use the original scathingly satirical Brecht lyrics.

The play keeps Brecht’s intent of exploring the materialistic evils of greed and dishonesty in a capitalistic society where the motivation to exploit others is greater than the capacity to empathize. However, perhaps in deference to the feelings of those who gave so much time to project, the Brechtian conclusions are tempered by the acknowledgement that, in New Haven at least, there are many decent people and worthwhile organizations trying to make a difference and working to improve the plight of the poor.

As a study in the structure of a city, The Good Person of New Haven was fun to watch and listen to. It must have been great to participate in, and it would be a wonderful thing for children and adults of any community to collaborate on.

(The Good Person of New Haven continues at Long Wharf through June 4. Call 203/787-4282 for tickets and curtain information.)