Mother Courage and her Children, theatre review: Gruelling and abrasive take on Brecht

Bertolt Brecht’s epic play is notoriously challenging. Set in the first half of the seventeenth century, it’s a vision of medievalism giving way to the mercantile values of modernity — and treats conflict as a series of grubby transactions.

Josie Lawrence is Courage, otherwise known as ‘the hyena of the battlefield’. A mother struggling to protect her children while war rages around them, she’s plunged into isolation by a string of bad decisions. In a performance of real resourcefulness, Lawrence combines swagger and tenderness, rage and a piercingly perceptive gaze.

The supporting cast is uneven — Laura Checkley and David Shelley make the strongest impression — and while director Hannah Chissick has some bold ideas, the elements of her deliberately rough and gutsy interpretation don’t hang together.

The traverse staging creates problematic sight lines, and a few scenes take place on a mezzanine that half the audience can’t readily observe. The music by Duke Special, composed for Deborah Warner’s 2009 production at the National Theatre, is too folksy, and Tony Kushner’s version of the text is accessible yet at times tiringly abrasive.

There’s no escaping the force of Brecht’s idea that war is a continuation of business by other means. But over the course of three hours this take on it, raucous rather than vibrant, proves gruelling.

Until Dec 9, Southwark Playhouse; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk