Mother Courage, oh where to start… I absolutely loved this play so much. Not to put a stereotype on the cover of this play, but I was not expecting to like it as much as I did, especially in the 90-degree heat in direct sunlight! Contrary to the heat, we did have the best seats in the house! Not literally because we did stand for 3 hours to watch the play, but we were right on stage almost! We were in the pitt, one could say.
Never have I seen a play by Brecht, but I really liked the way that he made me think about the play and its timeline. This play is set in the 17th century during the 30 years war in Europe. Although this play is set here, I do believe that his storyline was elevated by bringing in 21st century ideas and themes. The producer of this play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre put small twists on the play to make it more modern, which I appreciated. The fact that this play can be modernized a little bit but still convey the timeline shows Brecht’s talent for depth and lessons that can still be learned hundreds of years later.
Brecht uses things such as the “pow” of a gun or an explosion to make the watchers jump and remember that they are seeing a play and that it is not real. I believe that the use of stage effects is useful to help convey his deeper messages of the war and the means to survive in this day and age. He also uses Mother Courage to show that even though her children died, she is not a hero. Her love for money and survival is what ultimately pushed her children away and closer to death. The songs she sang after an important or emotional time that were often about war, death, or survival, helped to turned the page. This showed that no matter if horrible, hard things happen, you have to keep going to survive.
The lack of time that he allows for the audience to feel the pain that she felt made us look deeper at the economic state of the world and why things occur. For example, he interrupts Mother Courage from mourning to show the devastations of the war as she explains that the war is driven by profit at the cost of lives. Peace would destroy her business as she goes on to explain. Mother Courage has courage, but not as simply as it seems. By using her survival within a system that is broken, she has to more or less survive rather than continue on with courage.
Theatre in London U of A 