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Kieron Quirke's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Orla O'Loughlin.
Cast: The Young Vic
Description: Satirical morality story about the arms trade, by Bertolt Brecht. Translated by Enda Walsh, directed by Orla O'Loughlin.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
, Tube / Bus: Bus: 1, 4, 68, 171 
Phone: 0207922 2922
Off target: Pedro (Richard Katz) and Senora Carrar (Sandy McDade) struggle with a rifle and a clunky translation of Brecht
Pacifism comes under the microscope in this, the second double-bill in the Young Vic's enlightening Big Brecht Fest.
As with the first pair of shorts, A Respectable Wedding and The Jewish Wife, we are presented with one satire and one work in tragic mode. Unlike those two plays, this is an uneven match with Orla O'Loughlin's How Much Is Your Iron? providing all the value.
That production is both beautifully simple and simply beautiful. Translated with easy grace by Enda Walsh, it's a short parable condemning Sweden's profitable part in the rise of Nazi Germany. Good. I hate Sweden.
A lovely, mellow voiceover assures us beforehand that the moral will be easy to ascertain, and it is. In a neighbourhood populated by people with names such as Herr Austrian, Frau Czech and Herr Britt, Herr Svendson is an iron-seller who professes that he is, above all, a businessman.
The chief purchaser of his iron is a gangster (oo-ee!), whose money comes stained with blood.
Elliot Levey makes his allegorical figure-of fascism magnificently scary, all mad eyes and lizard-like charm. O'Loughlin keeps the tone fun right to the inevitably disturbing end.
But it's the design team who carry the show. Dick Bird's Amazonian set, lit smokily by Jon Clark, is a fantasy world to delight in.
On sound, Gareth Fry provides a thrilling climax - a massive, bass-heavy barrage of war-noise that makes the seats tremble.
In Senora Carrar's Rifles, director Paul Hunter takes a more conspicuously Brechtian approach than has been seen elsewhere in this season.
This Greek-style tragedy of a Spanish Civil War widow who won't let her sons fight gets a huge framing device, an undressed, artificial-looking set, and flat lighting.
It's drab to look at and, it turns out, not great to watch. Biyi Bandele's translation clunks. The actors neither fully engage with their characters nor each other: moments of emotion jump from nowhere, comic episodes are fudged. Only the play's political message comes across, loud and dated.
It's a shame that a season that otherwise reveals Brecht as a playwright of immense sympathy and breadth should include something so true to his negative stereotype: didactic and dull. Still, three out of four ain't bad, as a fat man almost sang.
• Until 5 May (020 7922 2922).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Dated political message? Are there no civil wars going on in the world anymore? Senora Carrar tackled the dilemmas faced by mothers in war-torn countries around the war - a topic as relevant relevant today as it was then. I thought this was an emotionally powerful piece with superlative acting - especially from Sandy McDade.
- Dino Morose, London, UK
