Mother Courage and Her Children
The Factory Performance Space, Sligo
★★★★☆
Somewhere in 17th century Sweden, in a county untouched by the conflict dividing Europe, two army recruiters are taken aback. Much to their frustration, the locals are hesitant to exchange their peaceful comforts for brutal life on the road in a crusade. “What they could use around here is a good war,” says a sergeant, with grim sincerity.
War picks up the slack, according to the aggravators in Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary play from 1941. There are new opportunities to exploit – few understand this better than Mother Courage, a saleswoman arriving to join the squadron on their march into battle. “So fill the hole up in your belly / Before you fill one underground,” she sings, from the seat of a wagon filled with brandy and military supplies.
Mother Courage has always been a hustler but, in Blue Raincoat’s meticulous production, she’s rarely looked this good. In the thrilling form of Sandra O Malley (slick in a leather trench coat and mustard cravat, with a knife hanging from her belt), she barters with breathtaking speed and hostility, renegotiating and lacerating at the same time.
Her gravest flaw is wanting her children only to share her extreme concern for self-preservation. She tells off army recruit Eilif (Fiona Buckley) – not for viciously slaughtering civilians, but for failing to de-escalate a life-threatening situation. Daughter Kattrin (Aisling Mannion) is forbidden from feeling attractive or romantic, in case she’s taken advantage of by soldiers. (Unfortunately, blundering son Swiss Cheese, nicely played by Killian Filan, walks into a trap all too late, his mother mistreating his rescue attempt like another negotiation).
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Seeing them travel with a squadron, collecting spoofers along the way (John Carty as a cynical chaplain; Bob Kelly as an army cook, breaking women’s hearts throughout Europe), the play resembles a darkly comic road trip. With highways that, in the stony expanse of The Factory’s auditorium, are made dim and wind-beaten by Barry McKinney’s lighting and Joe Hunt’s sound design, the world of director Niall Henry’s production is relentlessly desolate to the point of feeling like a joke.
War isn’t just a conflict in Brecht’s play; it’s a state of mind. When a temporary peace is declared, Mother Courage is horrified. How will she shift her stock now?
Blue Raincoat’s staggering achievement is to make her seem like someone succumbed to that grim psychology. Brechtsperts might expect the play’s several songs to be delivered face-front, to trigger the playwright’s “alienation effect,” but Henry mostly has them performed inward, as if searching for sympathetic listeners.
When Mother Courage sings about a younger version of herself, determined to trade-off and barter her way into mastering her own fate, her eyes hesitate to rise and meet anyone, as if afraid to admit she was once insecure and powerless.
Sometimes vulnerability is most affecting when you see someone fighting hard to conceal it. In a career-defining performance, O Malley makes Mother Courage seem more complex than a supporter for a devastating war; in a sad way, she was its ideal recruit.
Runs until 16th November. blueraincoat.com
