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.