Theater Review: Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, Shakespeare in the Park

For those of you who will not see Meryl Streep in Mother Courage, and this includes most of you, the bad news is you will have missed a miracle happening on stage. The good news is that you won’t have to watch it happen in the vacuum of this production.

You should know right off that I am not a Brecht person. I would like to be. I would like to read a rip-snorting translation of this production because I have a feeling it's supposed to crackle like a piece of fat in a very hot skillet. But nearly everything about this production is fashioned after the school of cooking that says if you put a frog in a pot of water and turn it up very slowly, it won’t jump out and will die by stewing, as it were, in its own juices.

So let’s start with the good part. In spite of this translation, Streep invades the stage with a vulnerability and willingness to slit open her own throat that is mesmerizing. She is an actor who is willing to be ugly inside and out. There is nothing attractive about her except the hooks she hurtles into your heart.

Courage is a woman who makes her living off war, and it has hollowed out her insides and left her barren. Throughout a maze of wars that take place in Europe from 162 to 1636, Courage follows the battles to sell whatever is in want. She stakes her inventory on the war’s existence. Peace will not be friendly to her. War will take three of her children, but it will put food in her mouth. She chooses to live instead of mourn.

It is a terrifying look into our own survival, and is not aided by this translation that seems too cute by half. “War — come and feed it what it needs.” “It overwhelms all opposition; what else is war but competition.” “You only need brave soldiers when the country is not managed properly.” “Torturing the person adds to the cost of war. And the rich can afford the taxes.” “Only the poor have courage because they’re hopeless. Look at how often they kill each other, carrying the weight of the wealthy on their broad stupid backs.”

Article Author: Tulis McCall

Tulis McCall is an actor and writer in New York. Her online theatre reviews can be found at Usher Nonsense.

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