BWW Reviews: MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, September 12 2014

Where once the weapons of war were manufactured, now Bertholt Brecht's furious cry against war is performed. Appropriately delivered as a promenade, Mother Courage and her Children continues at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich until 21 September, a venue beautiful in its own right, but bristling, sometimes literally banging, with significance for this celebrated play.

Teatro Vivo and Greenwich and Lewisham Young People's Theatre's collaboration casts the audience as the refugees, soldiers and press who follow Mother Courage and her infamous cart through the war-torn Europe of the 17th century, as she flogs food and supplies to both sides (switching allegiance as best suits prevailing circumstances). When she sees her children swept away in the conflict, she views even those disasters with the same cynical eye that she views the war - the eye for a profit, the eye for the main chance.

So if it's not the easiest of plays performed all-through for 100 minutes, and it's a collaboration between professional and youth actors and it's staged in a noisy, outdoor public setting, does director Sophie Austin pull it off? A qualified yes would be my answer. We get a sense of Brecht's epic theatre and we get much of his biting satire (and we suffer, just a little, ourselves in the elements, tagging along). We also get some splendid singing, especially from Denise Orita as Mother Courage and Kas Darley as Yvette. But some of Brecht's most bitter satire is lost a little in the open air with passers-by joining the caravan from time to time not always aware of the production and some lines borne away on the wind almost before we've registered them.

Schools are very much encouraged to attend performances and, with so many displaced people in the world and armed conflict as present globally today as in those dark days just before the Second World War when Brecht wrote the play in a blaze of angry inspiration, its relevance is undiminished. I just hope audiences can retain concentration sufficiently to take away not just the messages, but also the humour of this 20th century classic.

Photo credit - Doug Southall

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