A Brecht of fresh air from translator

MOTHER COURAGE, Library Company, Lowry Quays
IT’S not just me, is it? Bertolt Brecht really is the only playwright who can make a play about the 17th century Thirty Years War seem longer than the war, isn’t he?

Brecht’s influence was simple: he was to stuffy European theatre between the wars what Osborne was to stuffy British theatre in the Fifties — a clearing out of the old way. But he himself has been the old way for a long time — and it usually shows whenever a director decides to wind the clock back 80 years.

This time there is, however, a caveat: the translation used by the LIbrary’s Chris Honer is its saving grace — well, that and good performances from the leading company members.

Tony Kushner — writer of hit movie “Lincoln” and previously best known for his epic theatre work “Angels in America” — offers in this 2009 translation a wry, light-touch version of the war-profiteering drama.

Here Mother Courage — a fine mix of greed and matriarchal nobility from Eve Polycarpou — quips and jokes her cynical way from one battle to the next, taking life, good and bad, as it comes and profiting in her small-time way from the death and destruction.

She loses her own children: soldier Eilif (Rob Compton), feeble-minded Swiss Cheese (Kenny Thompson) and mute Kattrin (a touching portrayal from Amelia Donkor) along the way, offering the heavy-handed moral that even if you make money from war, you pay in other ways.

The production is simple — a cart and a couple of wooden frameworks; the musical interludes often welcome relief from the long and laboured story. But strong ensemble playing aside, no one goes to Brecht for fun, and these days very few go for the political enlightenment.