Brecht’s (arguably) greatest female creation is, I suspect, better played by an actress who is admired than by one who is beloved. For this revival (which uses Tony Kushner’s 2006 translation), producer Danielle Tarento and director Hannah Chissick have cast Josie Lawrence who, as actor, comedian, improviser and panel show guest, is much further towards the “hug” end of the continuum than the “kowtow” end. Lawrence strikes one as a lovely person... and therefore one sympathises with her Mother Courage, even forgives her much of her conduct, and thus atomises an entire dimension of Brecht’s complex portrait.

Brecht strives to understand Mother Courage’s resolution to hammer out a living trudging through the religious battlefields of 17th-century Europe by engaging in commerce at its most brutal and unapologetic. (The analogy with contemporary wars and capitalism could hardly be called opaque.) However, to understand is not to justify, much less to excuse. Lawrence’s Mother C. almost immediately delivers a palpable sense of what she is surviving for: her three children who, even though not her biological progeny, have come to travel with her and her wagon, and who she is determined to protect from the hells of war and poverty. Noble motives are the province of Brecht’s The Good Person Of Setzuan; Mother Courage is intrinsically flintier in its Realpolitik. Having lost her children one by one, she nevertheless continues, hauling the wagon offstage solo; it strikes me that only in this final moment does Lawrence’s Mother Courage reach the psychological place where she ought to have begun.

Whether articulating actual political/moral debates or parables thereof, Brecht requires a deal of awareness from his actors. Ageist as it seems to say so, the comparative youth of most of Chissick’s company limits them in this regard. Mother Courage’s exchanges with the Cook and the Chaplain generally come off better because Ben Fox and David Shelley have the maturity to provide their characters with hinterland. It takes patience to stay with this dramatic argument over three hours, especially when that argument is only partially being made in any case.

Written for the Financial Times.