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:

Michael Coveney - 28 September 2009

Any idea that “boring old Brecht”, as he is usually labelled these days by ignorant and condescending critics, will moulder in his grave while theatre disowns him is triumphantly shot to pieces in this thrilling production by Deborah Warner of one his greatest plays.

The opening was delayed by several days, and some previews cancelled, or half-cancelled, while Stephen Kennedy took over the role of the Chaplain and the production team struggled to pull together a highly complicated technical show.

But it was worth the wait, and Mother Courage, translated by Tony Kushner, is an ideal addition to the Travelex £10 tickets scheme: it shows how war is conducted by those on the fringes of the action, picking up the pieces and scraping a living: it has a tremendous set of new songs by the American chart-topper Duke Special; and it rocks.

Fiona Shaw is a mercurial, frighteningly atavistic Mother Courage, no sign of a head...

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Latest User Review

Paul Wallis - 7 December 2009:

Can't quite make up my mind on this one. I felt that some of the very modernist staging and the use of a rock n roll style was just arty pretencious nonsense but in fairness some of the sogs worked well and added a new dimension to the play. What can't be questioned is the acting, espceially from Fiona Shaw who gave a brilliant performance. Not my favourite Mother Courage but one definitely worth seeing...

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