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Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Description: Tony Kushner's translation of Bertold Brecht's drama about the instigation of wars. Starring Fiona Shaw, with music by Duke Special.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=1541
Lucid and earthy: Fiona Shaw as Brecht’s heroine and war profiteer
For a time, it looked as though the wheels had come off Mother Courage’s cart before she’d even begun her monumental journey across the battlefields of Europe in the Thirty Years War.
Deborah Warner’s production only made it halfway through its first preview, and had its press night delayed by nine days. But doom-mongers will be disappointed, as this is a competent, confident, if ultimately underwhelming reading of one of the trickiest masterpieces of 20th-century theatre.
Brecht's dominating themes, of the link between war and capitalism and the fine line between indomitability and foolhardiness, are brought to vivid life by Fiona Shaw as the maternal profiteer. Her entrance is statement enough: she arrives atop her wagon sporting sunglasses and a tin hat, accompanied by the dreadlocked Duke Special and his terrific onstage band.
Shaw then gives a lucid, earthy account of Brecht’s deliberate bundle of contradictions, extracting maximum value from Tony Kushner’s wry, witty translation but falling short of the role’s towering greatness. If she conveys the sense of gritty compromise needed to survive and even flourish in a world of bellicose men, she fails adequately to pinpoint the emotions of a woman who makes a living but loses her offspring.
Warner’s style is hectically Brechtian in the way she lays bare the mechanics of her modern-dress production. The captions for of the 12 scenes are read by a magnificently weary-voiced Gore Vidal; the tone of these recordings is the perfect encapsulation of a protracted conflict whose politics Brecht takes care never to explore or explain. His interest is in the little people caught in the undertow of history, although Warner’s stark scene settings give scant sense of war.
The play makes for epic theatre in every sense of the term. Amidst its bagginess are moments of undisputed brilliance but Warner fails to differentiate her scenes sufficiently. The result is a cumulative, enervating blurring of focus that even memorable work from Charlotte Randle as the raddled prostitute Yvette and Sophie Stone as Courage’s dumb daughter Kattrin fails to prevent.
The most striking images of the drama - Kattrin banging her drum to warn a sleeping village of imminent attack and that iconic final vision of Courage carrying on alone - should, make a greater impact. Nonetheless, Shaw, with tears spilling silently down her face, does a fine job of pretending not to recognise the recently mutilated body of her son Swiss Cheese (Harry Melling) in order to save herself and Kattrin from the enemy. Courageous stuff.
In rep until 8 Dec (020 7452 3000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Too loud - too much going on - and in fact rather boring in places. Fiona Shaw is strong, completely unsympathetic and the whole thing left me cold. Music quite pretty but didn't seem to make much of a point. Why were technicians and stage hands running all over the stage at times?
- Kate, london
Fiona Shaw was fantastic, as was Sophie Stone as the mute, but I was unimpressed by the production. Warner trying too desperately hard to be hip, to make a statement and to 'do something different'. It didn't work. The dreadlocked Duke Special may well be 'terrific', but for me, not in this context. Loathed, loathed, loathed the music. And it was all too loud. The music, the sounds, the white noise at the beginning. How much more theatrical and dramatic the death of Kattrin would have been if our ears had not been assaulted so much already. Before anyone reading this thinks I am an old dinosaur - I am 25. It didn't fit and each song was far, far too long. The play is nearly 4 hours long anyway, cutting each song to a maximum of 30 seconds would have improved it endlessly. Good try but no banana.
- Jeff, London, England
Exciting, gripping drama, imaginatively executed by Deborah Warner. The theme may be war, but the larger-than-life devices used, props and music, alongside gritty and energetic performances by the cast engaged me (and the rest of the audience from where I was sitting) to the end. Duke Special's haunting and ethereal music, contrasting powerfully against the dark, brutal chaos of war.
- Helen, England
