Chaos theory: Belvoir’s Mother Courage and Her Children

Two particular things happened at the beginning of this year: I sat down with director Eamon Flack for a discussion about his work, process, and intentions as incoming artistic director of Belvoir; and I saw a Korean pansori production of Brecht’s Mother Courage – Ukchuk-ga – at the Sydney Festival. Without wanting to jinx Flack’s production so early on in the year, I believed Ukchuk-ga to be one of those transcendent productions where you leave the theatre exhilarated, an emotional wreck because of its story, stagecraft, and the simplicity of its craft. And I still firmly believe that. Enter, then, Flack’s production of Mother Courage and Her Children for Belvoir. In January, as in his notes in the program, he talked about his desire to bring a taste of the global sense of chaos to Sydney in 2015, and trying to figure out how to do that in a theatrical way. And while he does this to an extent, this Mother Courage feels strangely empty, as though something is missing from it, and I still don’t know what it is, several weeks and two viewings later.

Unrelenting courage: Sydney Festival’s UKCHUK-GA: Pansori Mother Courage

Mother Courage and Her Children is perhaps Brecht’s most well-known play, written immediately prior to the Second World War in 1939, and first performed in 1941. Set in the seventeeth century, it is the story of ‘Mother Courage’ as she follows the Swedish Army during the Thirty Year War, eking out a living selling food and provisions to the soldiers. Like Brecht’s story, the Korean pansori also originated in the seventeenth century as an oral tradition of storytelling. Now a rigorous artform, pansori involves a singer and a drum, and combines a strong emotional stories with the ethereal vocal gymnastics of highly dedicated and highly trained singers. Currently playing as part of the Sydney Festival is UKCHUK-GA: Pansori Mother Courage, directed by In Woo Nam and written, composed and performed by Jaram Lee.

Brechtaking: Belvoir’s Once In Royal David’s City

A new play is always something to look forward to. Griffin Theatre Company knows this, and has made it their mission to be Australia’s new writing theatre. Back in 1986, Griffin produced Michael Gow’s (third) play Away; a critical and popular success, it quickly became Australia’s most produced play as well as a mainstay of English syllabuses across the country. Now, twenty-eight years later, Eamon Flack is directing Gow’s latest play, Once In Royal David’s City for Belvoir.

Billed as “eloquent, playful, big-thinking, tender and fierce … an astonishing act of theatrical invention,” it sounds like it should be the next Babyteeth (also directed by Flack for Belvoir). But a strange thing happens to Gow’s play, when it is taken off the page and put on its feet, when it is spoken and acted. On the page, it is very dialogue-heavy which all theatre is by default. But on its feet, it is very much the Will Drummond show, almost an uninterrupted one-hundred-minute monologue, in which the other characters (actors?) are merely pawns in his chess game, tools to help him tell his story.