Albion Electric Warehouse – until Saturday 20th October 2018
Reviewed By Dawn Smallwood
4****
Red Ladder Theatre Company is celebrating fifty years of radical theatre and they are reputed for its qualitative work to address the issues that matter to the many including social and political injustices. Their production, Mother Courage and her Children is no exception and what Red Ladder Theatre does, and is good at doing, is provoking the audience to think about the story and its themes beyond the stage.
Set to Bertolt Brecht’s play and translated by Lee Hall, Mother Courage, which is considered the anti-war play of all time, challenges the horrors of war and that hard work doesn’t guarantee rewards during such corrupt times. It is set to a 30 year war in the 17th Century (1618-1648) which was happening across Europe. The main character is Mother Courage (known as Canteen Anna from numerous sources) (Pauline McLynn) and her aim is to earn a living despite experiencing horrors including loss of life.
The play is set in the most of unlikely of places, an industrial warehouse basement in an unfamiliar part of the city, however the space is used very well and Sara Perk’s staging of this production is done creatively and with innovation. Each scene and its plot are told intimately at close quarters from its enclosed space, and the audience moves to each space under the guidance of the cast members. It isn’t the most comfortable of theatre experiences as there is a lot of moving about and standing for prolonged periods – however this way the audience can relate to and appreciate the physical journey and struggles which Mother Courage and her family endured when they pulled their cart and belongings from place to place and the hardships they experienced.
McLynn is excellent as Mother Courage and she portrays the role so well with the hardness, irony and wit. Her inner deep strength to survive is projected perfectly in the face of adversary. She is supported by an excellent cast who play the key characters and members of the company’s community chorus. It was an excellent performance in all and well done to Red Ladder Theatre for another successful production.
Brecht writes in a way to discourage many to look at play in a traditional way and from a distance. Instead the audience is encouraged to immerse Mother Courage physically and to an extent uncomfortably in order to get the maximum theatrical experience. This is also what Red Ladder Theatre, under the direction of Rod Dixon, encourages from the very beginning. More so to feel the realities refugees and migrant experience when they are in a new country and the transient lives they involuntary have to live. Mother Courage offers this opportunity from a civilian and humanity perspective.
The play is long, under three hours, but it is packed with entertainment and reflective poignancy with singing and music, set to Boff Whaley’s music, and the sharing of summative text in between scenes. The spirit of Mother Courage is more about the utilisation of senses other than just seeing it.