Mother Courage and Her Children

Synopsis

With war raging all around her, Mother Courage sells food and clothing to soldiers, switching allegiance when it suits her and striving to keep her business and children alive at all costs. Bloody battlefields are her marketplace, her wagon, her stall. Her remarkable and brutal story is told through humour and song; her story is one of choices and remains a powerful reminder of human resilience and loss in times of war. An epic masterpiece of one woman's survival.

Our Review:

27 February 2013

The Library Theatre and its Artistic Director Chris Honer bring a riotous and unique version of Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children to the stage.

The action takes place during The Thirty Years war, which spread across Europe in the Seventeenth century. As she follows the soldiers in her wagon, Mother Courage is the entrepreneur of the battlefield. It is her greed, as she strives to profit from the war, which loses her each of her children.

Fittingly for a play whose themes continue to this day, the design and feel of the production is timeless. Judith Croft recognises that two things should dominate the stage, Mother Courage and her wagon. The wagon itself, over the 12 years in which the play is set, ages alongside its owner.

The puns and innuendos in playwright Tony Kushner’s adaptation come thick and fast, with Mother Courage herself coming out with some of the best.  Eve Polycarpou as is splendid as the central ...

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Latest User Review

Vince mercer - 24 February 2013:

Limp,flat and under rehearsed ...how did they manage to screw up such powerful material....

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