Birds of Paradise Theatre Company’s forthcoming tour of Scotland is a contemporary and visually engaging translation of Brecht’s classic play, MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN by stage and screen writer, Lee Hall (BILLY ELLIOT, COOKING WITH ELVIS). Read more …
Bertolt Brecht was not a simple man. His personality and his politics are fascinatingly complex….. Mother Courage and her Children, in my opinion the greatest of his many works…. Tony Kushner
Set during the Thirty Years War, rolling conflict is not just the background for the action, it causes the action. Mother Courage, with two strapping sons and a pretty daughter, travel through the warzones, making their living from buying and selling whatever comes to hand. But, foodstuff and uniforms aren’t the only commodities the war machine is interested in.
Performed by a strong cast which includes Johnny Austin (DEAR GREEN PLACE), Garry Robson (RASPBERRY, REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL), Paul Chaal (PLAYBACK), Karina Jones (LIAR), Keith Macpherson (4.48 PSYCHOSIS, MONSTER IN THE HALL), with the lead role of Mother Courage played by the award-winning actress and director, Alison Peebles.
The production feels lacklustre, and lacking in the dramatic momentum needed to propel events along to their grim conclusion.
Riddled with dead moments of actors waiting for inspiration to remind them of their next words.
The style is not sharply Brechtian enough, and the pace is often vague and uncertain.
Mother Courage wears a thick skin of bitter wisecracks to protect her from the horrors of war: sure, she’s a caricature, but in Peebles’ powerful performance she’s one you can relate to.
This is a production that has lost confidence in itself and it trundles shapelessly to its conclusion with little conviction.
This is, then, a Courage with pathos and some powerful images, but without the aesthetic consistency required to pull this great play to its theatrical and political destination.
Feels competent and flat, rather than gripping and imaginative.
Production of Mother Courage and her Children set for tour
Interview: Johnny Austin, actor
On Tour, from Thursday March 10, 2011, until Saturday April 2, 2011.
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