LONG MAY THE GLOBE KEEP TAKING RISKS LIKE THIS

By Emma Carney | Bunny Pudding · Digital Coven · @bunnyscopes ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Press Invite

Having acted in Brecht myself during my training at the New Vic Youth Theatre – where I dazzled audiences with a once-in-a-lifetime and poignant performance of ‘Fat Nina’ in The Caucasian Chalk Circle – I felt semi-prepared for what to expect from Mother Courage And Her Children. What was interesting is that my experience with Brecht at the New Vic was performed in their round theatre, and my second experience of the usually-performed-at-a-distance playwright was once again being performed in the more audience-engulfing stage of The Globe. This production marked the Globe’s first-ever staging of Brecht, and I was excited to see what the always spectacular Globe performers had to offer. I wasn’t disappointed, though I did leave with some reservations.

The staging, designed by takis, was creative and imposing. Mother Courage’s cart dominates the space, a constant reminder that survival and commerce are tragically intertwined. However, I had a seat very far to the side, so I may have missed some elements that were designed for a front-facing view. That said, the Globe’s communal energy is impossible to ignore, and the production made bold use of it.

Michelle Terry as Mother Courage is a force. She plays the role as a calculating hustler with few soft edges – part brawdy entertainer, part desperate survivor, and part something else entirely. There was more than a hint of Catherine Tate’s Nan in her performance at times – that same cantankerous comic bite, the weary shrug, the sense of a woman who has seen it all and is too tired to pretend otherwise. (I feel ya M.C. I Feel Ya) Terry’s Courage is funny, exhausting, and, when the script allows it, genuinely moving. But she never asks for our sympathy, and Brecht wouldn’t want her to.

The updates to Anna Jordan’s translation feel sharp and timely. References to drones and contemporary warfare add an extra bite to the story, pulling Brecht’s 17th-century setting firmly into the present. The world is now divided into grids, factions known only by colours, and the endless war feels uncomfortably like our own. That sense of grim universality is where the production succeeds most.

The ensemble is strong throughout. Rachelle Diedericks as the mute Kattrin delivers a wounded, physical performance that speaks louder than words. Nadine Higgin as Yvette, the sex worker on Courage’s payroll, brings both humour and heartache, particularly in The Fraternisation Song. James Maloney’s jazz-infused score creates a deliberate dissonance, with rollicking upbeat numbers underscoring the most abject situations. It is classic Brecht, and it works.

For all its intelligence and ambition, the production occasionally struggles to balance Brechtian distance with the Globe’s open-hearted theatricality. But here is the thing: this is the Globe’s first Brecht, and it is a deeply promising one. The moments where it clicks – a plane overhead turning into an ominous threat, a sudden flare of grief before being pulled back, Terry holding the stage in ragged defiance – are genuinely thrilling. Not perfect, but never boring, long may the Globe keep taking risks like this.

Mother Courage And Her Children is running at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre until Saturday 27 June.

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Photo Credit: Marc Brenner