"Mother Courage' at Villanova (2nd review)

Been there, done that:
The unbearable irrelevance of Bertolt Brecht

JIM RUTTER

Whenever I hear that a theater company plans to stage a work by Bertolt Brecht, I always think, “Why bother?” Sure, in terms of structure and technique, Brecht may be the 20th Century’s most influential and original playwright. But his relevance has largely faded, especially for American audiences.

To a far greater extent than even the “Red Decade” playwrights like Clifford Odets, Brecht wrote the majority of his important plays with the propagandist’s goal of proselytizing on behalf of Marxist socialism: See Brecht’s plays, push for radical change in society. If someone wants to stage Brecht for historical reasons, fine. But realistically, American theater directors would attract more audiences if they staged a play that argued the merits of Creationism.

What’s worse, in pursuit of his message Brecht employed several techniques designed to distance the audience from the drama, so they could “think objectively” about the issues played out on stage. Songs, pre-scene plot spoilers, narration, actors appearing in multiple roles, etc., and Brecht’s deliberate creation of characters with whom audiences wouldn’t identify all served to push the issues to the forefront, while trying to keep the audience from becoming engrossed in the play itself. God forbid audiences should go to the theater for entertainment or escape.

Sidestepping the issues

Villanova’s current production of Mother Courage and Her Children largely sidesteps these issues to find (an obvious) contemporary relevance. Brecht’s anti-war epic shows Mother Courage and her three children pulling a military provisions cart across Europe during the Thirty Years War, squeezing profits by providing moldy bread and tattered supplies to ragged soldiers on the battlefield.

Though Brecht intended to show that communism offered the only safe alternative from militaristic fascism and western imperialism, Courage itself serves as a very powerful indictment of all war. Something, the play suggests, is very wrong if the exalted military virtues (courage, discipline, obedience) result in the destruction of buildings and people, not to mention the human spirit.

Director Sean Kairschner’s production at Villanova downplays the insistence of Brecht’s methods while simultaneously amplifying the power of his message. With the help of Jerold R. Forsyth’s stellar lighting design, Kairschner crafts potent images on stage during the play’s 12 loosely-strung-together scenes. As Mother Courage, Joanna Rotté tempers her anti-hero with enough compassion that she nearly crumbles under the weight of her own cynical exterior, and Kristen O’Rourke’s emotionally devastating performance as the mute daughter Kattrin displays a rare innocence unsoiled by war’s violence and corruption.

Two powerful images

All of these factors combine to produce an emergent power that subtly swells into a final pair of powerful images—a bankrupt Mother Courage stripping the shoes from her daughter’s corpse (to once again have something to sell) before marching once more behind the drums of battle—suggesting the folly of anyone who thinks that war can provide benefits or serve their interests better than prosperity achieved in peacetime.

But only true believers will find any reason to get angry during this production, and any relevance that Brecht’s play still offers is lost on an audience that obviously lacks the “long tempers” Brecht says are necessary to truly fight for change. The Villanova crowd laughed knowingly when Mother Courage remarked of her age that “this is not a common war, it’s a war of religion,” and she produced even more laughter when she joked, “No one cares the religion of the provisioner, only the price.” Rather than inspiring thought toward meaningful change, Brecht’s play became one more opportunity for the choir to applaud.

The polls all tell us that an overwhelming majority of citizens agree with Brecht about the folly of war. Yet that same populace keeps voting for politicians who zealously promote “a war that seemingly never ends.” Is it possible that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are better at manipulating their audience than the master playwright Bertolt Brecht?



To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.