MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN. To 2 December.

Tour

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN
by Bertolt Brecht translated by Michael Hofmann songs translated by John Willett

English Touring Theatre Tour to 2006
Runs 3hr 20min Two intervals
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 November at Cambridge Arts Theatre

A few moments might have more definition, but this is a strong, individual Courage that respects, yet is never trapped by, the name of Brecht.
Theatre’s most famous convenience store is open again. For all its length this is a fast-moving show, its pace set by Matthew Scott’s briskly melodic score (the only slow music is Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera-based ‘Solomon Song’).

Such rapidity characterises ETT director Stephen Unwin’s* clear, coherent style. Behind the bare stage a map shows European states in 1618, when the Thirty Years’ War broke out. It’s useful for reference as Michael Cronin narrates time and place shifts for each scene, with sufficient emotion to ensure speed doesn’t mean flatness.

It certainly doesn’t in Diana Quick’s Courage. A shrewd trader, she’s submerged in business as she is in the war. She’s repeatedly burdened with goods, and often absent buying or selling when things go wrong for her 3 children. Yet the ‘Mother’ in her name isn’t ironic. Her blank stare at seeing a son’s dead body expresses the agony she dares not openly show. Light fades then rises, suggesting the prolonged intensity of the experience.

Quick’s voice, drawling yet assured, unexcitable yet sharp, remains as her hair greys with passing years. This aging makes a searing final image as she latches onto a regiment, pulling the cart on which she was first triumphantly hauled by her sons. Leaving her dead daughter behind, unaware of one son’s death, Courage seems on a treadmill (a single circle, neither Caucasian nor chalk, marks the stage-floor), a small, bent figure dwarfed by events around.

Her lack of moral realisation is emphasised in the sharp contrast with Jodie McNee’s Kattrin, who has any young woman’s concerns: she loves Yvette’s red shoes, and fears being seen with a facial disfigurement. A yowl or laugh may be her full repertory of sounds but this muteness speaks volumes as her increasingly assertive expression challenges her mother, or as she laughs triumphantly when foiling an army’s surprise attack. The decision to shoot her seems caused more by soldierly vanity than the endangered military operation.

It’s in the developing contrast between Quick’s blinkered survivor and McNee’s Kattrin, dead but having spoken up through her warning drumbeats, that this production’s heart lies.

*A Guide to the Plays of Beertolt Brecht by Stephen Unwin is published by Methuen at £9.99

Mother Courage: Diana Quick
Kattrin: Jodie McNee
Swiss Cheese: Youssef Kerkour
Eilif: Samuel Clemens
The Cook: Tom Georgeson
The Chaplain: Patrick Drury
Yvette: Gina Isaac
Sergeant/Armourer/Ensign: Barry McCormick
Recruiter/Old Colonel/Farmer: Michael Cronin
General/Clerk: Wale Ojo
Sergeant/Young Man: Daniel Goode
Young Soldier/Farm Boy: Gordon Taggart
Old Woman/Farmer’s Wife: Janet Whiteside

Director: Stephen Unwin
Designer: Paul Wills
Lighting: Malcolm Rippeth
Sound: Dan Steele
Music: Matthew Scott
Costume: Mark Bouman
Assistant director: Jamie Harper
Assistant costume: Mia Flodquist

2006-11-16 10:42:47