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Bertolt Brecht would have been pleased. Very pleased.

The playwright wanted to alienate his audience, to make them think about what he was saying, rather than feel it. Brecht would not let us forget it was a play we were watching. His characters would break into song to emphasize a lesson. And he was didactic as all get out.

Ditto the Rogue Theatre's production of Brecht's "The Good Woman of Setzuan," directed with an earnest but uneven hand by Cynthia Meier.

Even with his finger-wagging and lecturing, Brecht was good, with an original approach to storytelling and theater.

This large-cast production was all over the place in terms of talent, but it was enormously thoughtful in its approach to the play.

And it made use of some knockout puppets that fascinated and further underscored Brecht's we're-putting-on-a-play approach.

The puppets, so oversized they took several cast members to help the actors get in and out of them, were fashioned by Matt Cotten of Tucson Puppet Works. The actors stood beneath the puppets while they were lowered down over them. Their legs stuck out, but their arms were hidden as they worked the puppets. A sheer cloth was about at the place where the god's chest would be, and we could see the actors' faces (another Brechtian touch) through it. Looming over the actors were gargantuan heads that looked fierce and showed the appropriate Chinese influence.

These puppets were the gods who have come to Setzuan in search of one good soul.

They find it in a poor prostitute, Shen Te, who is willing to put them up for the night. As a reward, they give her money. She promises to continue to do good, and plans to do that with the tobacco shop she buys (yeah, well, Brecht wrote this in the period 1939-1941, before the surgeon general's report on tobacco).

But this compassionate woman discovers that her good heart will turn her into a pauper again, as she is being taken advantage of at every turn.

So she periodically tucks her hair under a hat, pulls pants on and pretends to be her male cousin, Shui Ta.

Under this guise, she can get her shop and her life under control, be cruel in order to make money, be heartless in order to not be taken advantage of. In this Brechtian world, there are no gray areas; it's all very black and white. You are good or you are bad. He would have hated the compassionate-conservatism spiel.

Brecht's not subtle with his lessons. At one point, Shen Te says to the gods: "Since not to eat is to die / Who can long refuse to be bad? / As I lay prostrate beneath the weight of good intentions / Ruin stared me in the face / It was when I was unjust that I ate good meat."

I mean, can you get any more blatant?

Brecht's Marxist approach can get tiresome in this particular play. Still, he writes so well and spins such a good tale, and, in the end, does what he intended — makes you think — that you're willing to put up with the lecture.

Shen Te was shaped by Patty Gallagher, who is a talented actress. And this is a humongous role — she was in nearly every scene. She was well rooted and held her own. Still, she never quite made the line between Shen Te and Shui Ta sharp enough for us to see the contrast of good and bad. If her Shui Ta had been an archetype of a cruel, harsh person, as her Shen Te was of the good, gentle woman, Brecht's intentions, it seems, would have been clearer.

Martie van der Voort's Wong, the water seller who first encounters the gods, is laced with humor and hysteria. It was a fine balancing act on van der Voort's part.

And Roger Owen's turn as an Irish policeman in a Chinese town in this German play was a total stitch.

Playing the gods and several other small roles were Jill Baker, Nick Bravin and Leanné Whitewolf Charlton. Especially strong was Charlton, who infused some definite personality into her god — the others had less to work with. They all manipulated the puppets with remarkable dexterity and definition — considering the puppets' size, that's mighty impressive.

Far too few people do Brecht these days, it seems. Lucky us, we've Rogue Theatre, dedicated to doing the hard, thoughtful plays. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't quite. This one doesn't quite. Nonetheless, we feel richer for the experience.