Mother Courage & Her Children (2024)
Performances: Tuesday 8 – Saturday 12 October 2024, Old Fire Station
Contents
Introduction
Mother Courage is considered by some to be the greatest play of the 20th century, and perhaps also the greatest anti-war play of all time. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage, a wily canteen woman with the Swedish Army, who is determined to make her living from the war.
Over the course of the play, she loses all three of her children, Schweizerkas (Swiss Cheese), Eilif, and Kattrin, to the very war from which she tried to profit.
Preview from the SLT website
What inspired you to choose this particular Brecht play to direct?
It’s complicated, but for various reasons, I started reading a lot of Brecht. What drew me to Mother Courage, apart from the titular character herself, was the setting – an endless, pointless, grinding, greedy war, where virtue is defined as whatever is useful to those with power. The cart, too, attracted me – a sort of depressing Tardis, and once I had it in my head how I’d like to present it, I took the plunge.
Tell us a bit more about Brecht's dramatic style and method
Brecht didn’t want theatre to be an escape, either for the characters of the audience. He wanted to expose and confront, rather than allow us to forgive our monsters through empathy and identification. His solution was to constantly remind the audience that they were watching a play, not life (this will be obvious from the staging), and to give the actors very little subtext.
This gives his plays the character of a dark pantomime – a directness and refusal to hide behind ambiguity. In any event, if an audience member felt compelled to shout “he’s behind you,” I would take it as a compliment.
The play was written in 1939 - how do you feel it resonates today?
Brecht’s central theme was that virtue is impossible in a bad world, and that no war can be ‘good’, since it will always foster cruelty, indifference, and callousness. Thank god we don’t have to worry about any of that anymore…!
Tell us about the characters we'll meet
Mother Courage herself dominates the play. She is, perhaps fairly, described as “a hyena of the battlefield.” Her confidence and strength are what allows her to prosper, but are also ultimately the source of her downfall. With her come her children: Katryn, the mute, abused daughter; Swiss Cheese, the foolish but honest younger son; Eilif, the eldest and favourite.
Their entourage also, at various stages, acquires a charming but selfish cook, and a chaplain of dubious conviction. And so, the troupe wander the battlefields, encountering monsters and victims of the war along the way.
What have been the biggest challenges in directing the play?
Time and admin…
Can you sum up the play in three words?
War is hell?
Cast
- Mother Courage - Ingrid Miller
- Eilif - Tom Louis
- Swiss Cheese - Blue Summer
- Kattrin - Carys le Maréchal
- Cook - Jason Rosenthal
- Chaplain - Darren Chancey
- Yvette - Eliza Aquilina
- The Recruiter and Company - Fuad Kamil
- The General and Company - Tirusanthan Thiruvilangam
- The Sergeant and Company - Edmund Aubrey
- The Young Soldier and Company - Ashwin Tharoor
- The Ensign and Company - Luke Hudson
Crew
- Stage Manager - Aurora McLaughlin-Hacker
- Assistant Stage Managers - Cal Beckett, Jackie Burch
- Lighting Design - Tom Melly
- Sound Design - Tom Melly
- Operator - Eleanor Walker
- Set Design - Tom Melly
- Build Crew - Sean Thomas, Barry Heselden, Carole Ironside, cast and crew
- Show photography - Benjamin Copping
- Assistant Director - Aurora McLaughlin-Hacker
Reviews
If you have a chance to see Mother Courage tonight then go. Ingenious and playful staging that we’ve come to expect from Tom Melly which really lifts the dark subject matter. A really tight ensemble also. Oh and Ingrid’s performance, ruthless and charismatic but also heartbreaking until the final gut punch of an ending. Congratulations everyone and enjoy your final performance.
Anna Rubincam
Gallery
Reminiscences and Anecdotes
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