What an irony that the Young Vic’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Soul of Szechuan should open the same week as Sichuan is hit by a catastrophic earthquake.

Sichuan sure needs all its good souls now. And Brecht could never have anticipated how aptly this would demonstrate his central thesis that being good is almost impossible when it is a struggle just to survive.

China today is wealthy, self-confident and open to the world’s media crawling through the ruins as 50,000 troops try to rescue the victims. In 1976 when the Tangshan earthquake killed about a quarter of a million people, China’s government did exactly what Burma’s junta is doing today – cling to power while hiding the poverty and misery of its people out of shame and xenophobia. It’s a reminder that a little hard cash lubricates the moral conscience no end – it even makes giving into a guilty pleasure – a point made by Jane Horrocks’ lead character, the saintly ingénue Shen Te and her hard-headed alter ego Shui Ta. She/he is the most earth-shaking element of this production.

The set looks like a genuine Chinese factory, but the director Richard Jones’ somewhat operatic approach doesn’t really rescue Brecht from the rubble. The three Gods (as Richard plus two reincarnations of Hyacinth Bucket) get some good laughs. Adam Gillen as Wang the water seller keeps the story flowing round the rocks of Brecht’s inclination to preach. But if it wasn’t for the awful coincidence of the recent earthquake, quite a lot of the relevance of this production would be lost. As it is, the energy of the cast and Jane Horrocks’ wilful waif make everyone think what it must be like in the collapsed cities in central China (or the flooded Irrawaddy delta), in pouring rain with only poverty, loss and desperation for neighbours.