Review: MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, Shakespeare's Globe
Michelle Terry drags her wagon, and the play, around The Globe
Is it ever wise to take on Brecht by actually dialling things up? If so, the case is not made by this heartfelt and important Mother Courage and her Children, stymied pretty much from the off by its venue.
The distance, strangeness and alienation that lies at the heart of Epic Theatre just can't be established . It is impossible to avoid theatre’s history, theatre’s wonder and, most of all, theatre’s connection to its public at The Globe, built explicitly to place such thoughts at the heart of its work. Not for no reason is this production the first Brecht staged there.
That said, innovation is also at the heart of 21st Century Theatre so the boldness of director, Elle While, and her lead (and Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Michelle Terry) must be applauded. To demand that an audience refrain from doomscrolling what little media we get from war zones and, in person, planes overhead, focus on a warning from 1939 (of all years) is surely fulfilling one of theatre’s crucial functions in a democracy.
In Anna Jordan’s 2019 translation, the conflict into which Mother Courage plunges herself and her children is an endless war between The Blues and The Purples. Everyone has forgotten what it was for and nobody knows how it will end as factions fight over squares on a grid, as if in an old school boardgame. It’s an abstraction that allows drones as weapons but no battlefield communications - though there are plenty of guns - with war as the default, not peace.
Terry is a compelling, fiery, ferociously amoral redhead whose hair speaks to a neutrality in the battles and whose flag flies for whichever army will buy her supplies. Her business ebbs and flows, but never fails, war being pretty good for capitalism, one reason why capitalists keep having them. But Brecht also posits war as a useful tool to placate and distract the proletariat - rather on the nose in 2026.
Mother Courage pulls her cart, protects her children (though her approach is hardly aligned with safeguarding best practice) and sings, James Maloney composing some jazz and swing tunes for Zac Givi’s band, always visible above the stage.
She also channels Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface when it comes to swearing. It was notable that the tedious tittering that always, even in 2026, greets a swear had disappeared long before the end, a sure sign that the language had lost its power, the groundlings and those of us in the seats overwhelmed by the relentless bashing we received.
It’s not all shouty and sordid. The best work comes from Rachelle Diedericks as the elective mute, Kattrin, the daughter her mother protects most fiercely, although whether it’s to spare her the ordeal of rape or protect the monetary value of her virginity, is left ambiguous. Your heart aches as she craves love, but is denied access to men and as she gazes upon the sex worker Yvette (Nadine Higgin, also excellent) who has men at her beck and call. Poor Kattrin she makes her choice at the end and you long to save her.
Rawaed Asde’s Swiss Cheese tries to emulate his mother’s ducking and diving, but he lacks the cunning and is first robbed then killed. Eilif (Vinnie Heaven) picks up on his mother’s loose morality and is shocked to find that he is held to a higher standard of behaviour in a brief ceasefire than he is in wartime - justice is nothing if not arbitrary and quick in a paramilitary force.
One’s reaction to this production might turn on one’s opinion of the play itself. Its many detractors may welcome its reconstruction for a space that is, essentially, an architectural group hug, the antithesis of Brecht's underlying ethos. Fans of its uncompromising power will raise an eyebrow at its unnecessary boosting, preferring Brecht to speak for himself, albeit in English, though I’d love to see an MC in German with surtitles.
For all its ambition and Terry’s remarkable energy in portraying a remarkably energetic woman, the vision of this production never resolves into a clear picture, too sharp at some times, too fuzzy at others.
Mother Courage and her Children at Shakespeare's Globe until 27 June
Photo images: Marc Brenner
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