The yard at Shakespeare's Globe can be an uncomfortable place to sit for a long period of time, but I like to think that Bertolt Brecht wouldn't have it any other way. Under the open sky, with the sound of planes overhead and a decent slice of London's potted history whistling through the timbers, the theatre's first-ever production of Mother Courage and Her Children blends cosy tragedy with a sharp, unsettling lecture on survival.
This is not a light-hearted production for all the family. It is an appropriately coarse and gruesome tale of desperate people's struggle for survival in a war-torn land. There is swearing. People die. A lot. There are certainly some laughs along the way, but this is unmistakably a dark tragedy and should a few tears be shed along the way, nobody would find that out of place.
Director Elle While, working from Anna Jordan's translation, strips away much of the romanticism of the “commoner” and this is both a heart-rending tragedy about a poor mother and a clinical dissection of how capitalism feeds on chaos. The piece's hero prop, a creaking, overloaded beast of a cart made of plywood and tarpaulin designed by takis, is less a vehicle than an anchor, as Mother Courage (Michelle Terry) does not so much drag it as negotiate with it, treating the war not as a disaster but as a volatile market sector.
Terry's performance is a masterclass. Mother Courage continually refuses the easy tears of maternal martyrdom, and the often-vilified character is given true depth, particularly when her son Swiss Cheese (a jittery, haunted Rawaed Asde) is marched to his death and we watch her forced to swallow the pain and haggle over his corpse with the pragmatic rhythm of a fishwife pricing haddock. The horror isn't in the scream; it's in the aftermath.
The supporting cast ensures the epic nature of the piece never sags. Rachelle Diedericks is a revelation as the mute Kattrin and turns physical limitation into explosive physicality. Her wordless drumming during the final, devastating act cuts through the Globe's acoustics like a siren. Nadine Higgin is wonderfully complex as the prostitute Yvette beautifully counterpointed by her excellent singing voice, while Max Runham's Narrator frames the action with the cold efficiency of a news anchor reporting a stock market crash.
The play is backed by James Maloney's score, impeccably performed live, and this is deliberately jarring, shifting from bawdy tavern tunes to dissonant metallic clangs. This, alongside gunfire effects that will make you jump out of your seat and the actors' use of the planes overhead to bring inescapable reality in as an extension of the production reminds us that a great deal can still be made from the old analogue techniques.
The setting is simple but highly effective, enough to set the scene well without crowding or overproducing and Globe's architecture is used ruthlessly; the groundlings become the mob, the gallery becomes the indifferent elite.
This is a Mother Courage for an era of disaster capitalism. It is weary, angry, and deliberately unsatisfying emotionally. You may leave weeping. but you may just as easily leave suspicious of everyone around you.
Mother Courage and Her Children runs at Shakespeare's Globe until the 27th of June.
Review: Damien Russell Photos: Marc Brenner