Theatre
Confounding
Christopher Edwards
Mother Courage (RSC Barbican)
Brecht's claim as one of the 20th- century masters of theatre has always struck me as a very suspect proposition indeed. I can still vividly recall the sense of futility, irritation and boredom I suffered on the occasion of the National Theatre's production of Galileo several years ago. None of his work that I have seen per- formed in English has done anything to convince me that he was other than tendentious in his handling of historical fact, solemn and childish in his moralising, and a purveyor of grey, slabular dialogue.
Brecht was, avowedly, a rationalist, a Marxist and a propagandist, and he forged some sort of aesthetic to go with his convictions. In particular, there is his theory of 'epic' theatre and its design on the audience's attitude towards society. In a word, emotional identification with char- acter was verboten. Brecht was after induc- ing a critical state of mind which would produce socially useful emotions in the spectators' breasts and lead them to de- nounce the injustices of the existing social order. The thought that my suffering was all deliberate and somehow aimed to im- prove me has never proved a comfort in the theatre. Brecht was well aware of bourgeois expectations — aware, that is, of the contagious nature of magical repre- sentation, and what he wanted, exactly, was for the audience not to be taken in. For the Brechtian 'epic' actor, the compliment 'he did not merely act Lear, he was Lear' would be the most damning criticism im- aginable.
The RSC's magnificent production of Mother Courage rather confounds my pre- judices. It also seems to have disappointed the Brechtians, and I am quite sure it would have infuriated Brecht himself. The play was meant as a cautionary tale about Anna Fierling, a trader and camp-follower of the Thirty Years War whom Brecht wanted to depict as culpable because she feeds off events that cause universal mis- ery. She loses her three children, victims as it were of her entrepreneurial zeal, and at the end we see her dragging off her cart, alone, to catch up with the army, saying, 'I must get back to business.' Brecht saw her as a villain and hoped, no doubt, that we would leave the theatre indignant at her blindness and resolved to do something about ending war. The press at the first ever performance perversely found the character heroic and described her as a Niobe-like tragic figure. Brecht, in a pas- sion, rewrote the play, supervised the next production himself and cast his wife as Mother Courage. The press responded by discovering a 'humanist saint'. It would seem that Brecht, the propagandist, couldn't win then, nor does he triumph entirely in Howard Davies's lavish produc- tion at the Barbican.
Lavish, but artfully so. There is a sort of false austerity behind it. John Napier has designed a fascinating Heath Robinson contraption which links up Mother Cour- age's cart, complete with its shovels, saus- age and boots, to a flagpole at the other end of an axle. The axle is linked, vertical- ly, to a huge cogged wheel which grinds relentlessly round as Mother Courage treks across central Europe in search of profit. This is very unBrechtian of Napier as it suggests that she is caught on the rack of history rather than willingly seeking out catastrophe for her own benefit. I think Napier may actually have been after an authentically stark image here, but the operatic richness of David Hersey's light show undermines the mechanistic grimness of his contraption. There are searchlights criss-crossing through smoky sunlight to create, brilliantly, an atmosphere of battle or eery dawn. Meanwhile, posted around the stage like spooky sentinels there stand musicians in bowler hats performing George Fenton's clever pastiche numbers. There have been complaints that his Weill/ Dessau based music is unoriginal. I think 'I'm street-wise.' what matters is that the pastiche (like the original) exploits the atmospheric potential of the instruments to such telling effect, with the saxophone, banjo, muted trumpet and strings combining to create a very suggestive feel of desolation, ominousness and hollow jauntiness.
Judi Dench stars as Mother Courage, another unBrechtian compliment but she Is compelling in the role. Dressed in a long leather coat and topped by a punky, orange hairdo, she succeeds in making tr smile while preserving the character s stoniness of heart. In her performance that stoniness comes across as an uncompromis- ing will to survive. Her admiring spectators in the audience obtusely remain slaves of long-established habits of emotion by de- tecting signs of maternal anguish during the key scene when, with her head bowed to hide her face, she affects not to recog- nise the corpse of her son Swiss Cheese for whose life she has bargained unsuccessful- ly. If she owns up to being his mother the soldiers will shoot her too, and our 10111 response to her dilemma is one of sYn!" pathy. We are driven to attend to this excellent production by a strong supPort; ing cast, some superb staging, and Awl Dench's powerful projection of hunla° spirit. It is more than enough to guide t!s through the playwright's spun-out episodic narrative and his pressing didactic needs.
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