The first English-language performance in Britain, as The Good Woman of Setzuan, was given at the Progress Theatre in Reading, Berkshire in 1953.
Andrei Serban directed the Great Jones Repertory Company in productions of The Good Woman of Setzuan with music by Elizabeth Swados at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in 1975,[7] 1976,[8] and 1978.[9] The company also took the production on tour in Europe in 1976.[10]
Composer/lyricist Michael Rice created a full-length musical version with Eric Bentley which premiered in 1985 at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre, directed by Cliff Baker. This version was subsequently licensed through Samuel French.
Episode five of the eighth season of the television series Cheers, "The Two Faces of Norm", was based on the play.
David Harrower created a new translation entitled The Good Soul of Szechuan, which opened at the Young Vic theatre in London from May 8 - June 28, 2008, with Jane Horrocks as Shen Te/Shui Ta and a score and songs by David Sawer. This retained several features of the 1943 version, including the themes of heroin and drug-dealing.
Indian theatre director Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay directed an adaptation of this play as Bhalo Manush in early the early 1970s with Keya Chakraborty playing the lead. Arvind Gaur directed another Indian adaptation by Amitabha Srivastava of the National School of Drama in 1996 with Deepak Dobriyal, Manu Rishi, and Aparna Singh as lead actors. In 2009, Arvind Gaur reinterpreted the play with well-known activist and performer Mallika Sarabhai as Shen Te/Shui Ta.[11]
In 2016, Ernie Nolan directed the play at the Cor Theater in Chicago.[12] The role of Shen Te/Shui Ta was played by a male actor (Will Von Vogt) and the setting was a contemporary Chicago ghetto.[13] Tony Kushner's 1997 adaptation was used.
In 2024, Justin Jain directed the play at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, running April 2-21 and then available solely by streaming through May 21, also using Tony Kushner's 1997 adaptation.[14] As a means to critique and subvert the "cultural appropriation that pervades the play,"[15] Jain set the story in a "Fictional Pan-Asian Narnia"[16] incorporating multiple components from many Asian cultures — for example, one review took stock that "Shui Ta speaks a combination of Vietnamese and English, announcements and signs are written in Cantonese, [and] Wang the water-seller (Jungwoong Kim) speaks Korean and is interpreted in English by those around him,"[17] though stage-mounted digital signs provide the script in English throughout, essentially serving as both closed captioning and subtitling (at different points) for the audience — while the Three Gods are white, American, "surfer bro" archetype[18] tourists, complete with whiteface, "loud" Hawaiian shirts and "bro tanks", sunglasses, fanny packs, and exaggerated Californian accents.[17] The Broad Street Review notes of the latter portrayal that, "[i]t's played up for laughs while also serving as a multifaceted, pointed criticism of white tourists in Asia, western indifference and exotification, lack of accountability, and, of course, prompting the audience questioning the characters' authority and legitimacy as 'gods'. It's an interesting and poignant reverse in a play that has too often been riddled with Orientalist and frankly racist portrayals of Asian characters by non-Asian actors."[17] Dramaturg Kellie Mecleary notes that this portrayal of the Three Gods also serves to represent "the actions and effects of American Imperialism on [Jain's] family's country, the Philippines."[15]
Taking place in a "Filipino trash slum," Jain and set designer Steven Dufala used actual trash from an industrial recycling center to create the entire set.[19] In addition to helping them achieve their goal of a zero-waste production,[19][20] the source of the material also provides a stark contrast in viewpoints between the Western audience and the reality that exists in many developing Asian nations, such as the Philippines, from which Jain's parents immigrated.[19][15] Jain describes this by saying that, "[t]o us Westerners — First World folks — we see a cardboard box and all we see is a cardboard box. But the ingenuity and adaptation that people who live in that environment see in a cardboard box is really exciting to me. Our stage may at first glance look like disorderly junk, but it has a curated sense of necessity."[19]
