MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN
MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir, 6 June-26 July 2015. Photography by Heidrun Lohr - above: Robyn Nevin and Paula Arundell; right: Emele Ugavule.
Twice in relatively recent memory Robyn Nevin has been put in the position of having to rescue and carry floundering productions. The first was in 2010 when Sydney Theatre Company’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was almost sunk by a millstone around its neck by the name of international star William Hurt. The second was Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2012 gender swap Queen Lear – an idea that absolutely depended on her for its success.
On both occasions the diminutive powerhouse pulled off the impossible: creating something memorable out of what otherwise was headed towards dog’s breakfast territory. Much the same can be said for her long- and much-anticipated appearance in this production of Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 epic Mother Courage and Her Children.
It’s not an easy play, not least because of the playwright’s famously perverse attitude towards it. He did not want the audience to like or sympathise with the central character and went to some effort to make her as tough and cynical as might be imagined. Nevertheless, no matter what Brecht intended (think, don’t feel) audiences saw a woman struggling to make a living in wartime. As well, much of Courage’s efforts are bound up in her three children – Swiss Cheese (Tom Conroy), Eilif (Richard Pyros) and the mute Kattrin (Emele Ugavule) – and her determination to keep them out of the military, alive and out of harm’s way. In this instant information age we are so conscious of that kind of horror in real life’s many and vicious little wars it’s virtually impossible not to be on Courage’s side and see her as heroic, even if she is a cranky old bitch.
Moreover, in director Eamon Flack’s reading of the play, the laughs and a bright fairground atmosphere are quickly established through the appearance of her travelling cart/shop: shiny red and decorated with coloured fairy lights. And, as Nevin is one of the best deliverers of the acid-sharp one-liner in the business, and turns on Klieg-like charm to warm the audience, the result is a production that’s high in surface gloss but with very little going on below that entertaining veneer. Ironically it’s as unlike Nevin’s own gritty and emotionally charged interpretation of the play (for STC in 2006 with Pamela Rabe in the title role) as could be, and not in a good way.
Supposedly set in Europe during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), it was actually Brecht’s major work and intention to warn of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Europe as a whole. As well as depicting the truth of war – nasty, dirty, brutish and not remotely heroic – he also used Courage and those she encounters to cast Capital in the spotlight of his profound disapproval. Mother Courage will do anything for a buck and understands – just like Dick Cheney and his Halliburton company – that keeping wars going can only be good for business.
The depths and nuances of the play are missing in action, however, and that effect begins with the shop/cart which is more sideshow alley than struggling small business. And the incongruously gleaming vehicle is made even shinier by a mainly white-painted set – floor and walls – with a black corner of contrast where props and musical instruments are stored (designer: Robert Cousins). The costumes are more successful (designer Alice Babidge) ranging from Courage’s ratty-50s look across tatty-glam for the grifter-tart Yvette (Paula Arundell) and neat manmade fibre clericals for the Chaplain (Anthony Phelan). And Benjamin Cisterne’s lighting is more traditionally Brechtian – bright and clear with occasional drops into blue-tinged night.
With the exception of Nevin and Arundell, however, whose focus, purpose and achievement are at all times razor-sharp and impeccable, the rest of the company often appears to be lost or, at least, not yet at home with who they are, why they are and where they are. And the same can be said of the mish-mash of styles evident in the overall production: Nevin is required to do a choreographed jig as part of her final song for instance and it’s ridiculously without context or dramatic purpose. (New music for the songs is by Stefan Gregory and is effective.)
All in all, this Mother Courage is a peculiarly off-key disappointment with Robyn Nevin’s extraordinarily powerful conviction performance being its driving force and saving grace. But she's virtually in another play and that's odd.
And finally, while there is discussion beginning to happen in Australian theatre about the need for “colour blind casting” – because non-Caucasian actors are so rarely cast in main roles – it is seriously weird that the mute and powerless Kattrin, who is described as “scarred” and “ugly” and therefore unable to attract a man is played by a black woman; as is the amoral tart, Yvette. It seems to me to be not so much colour blind as cliched typecasting of the worst and oldest kind.
