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
*
Mother Courage is perhaps Brecht’s most well-known
play, written immediately prior to the Second World War in 1939, and first
performed in 1941, in the ruins of a “failed
thousand-year empire,” as Flack says. Set in the seventeenth century, it is the
story of Anna Fierling – or ‘Mother Courage’ as she is known – as she follows
the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years’ War, eking out a living selling food
and provisions to the soldiers. As Flack
sees it, the play is not so much about war, but about the chaos and lawlessness
of war, “the vile mix of economic and superstitious forces – the terrible mix of
material scarcity and human fear – on both sides.” And we certainly get that in Michael
Gow’s fresh new translation.
Gow’s skill here is to trim Brecht’s script down slightly, to get rid
of the dead wood in it, and spin it in a contemporary idiom which doesn’t grate
or jar but rather enlivens – reinvigorate – the play. In almost every respect
Gow succeeds, but the play still feels sluggish in the last fifteen minutes of
Act One, even on second viewing two weeks into its run. Flack directed Gow’s latest play – Once
In Royal David’s City – at Belvoir last year; the final scene is a
terrific monologue – essentially, a lesson to a group of Year Eleven students –
about Brecht and his Verfremdungseffekt theory (more commonly known as
‘the alienation effect’ or ‘the distancing effect.’) What Gow makes clear in
this monologue is that the preconception of the ‘alienation effect’ – that
we’re not meant to feel anything – is actually wrong. In fact, it’s quite the
opposite: it’s not so much about not-feeling, but rather about taking an audience
out of the emotional pull of the moment so we can critically reflect on it, so
we can understand the characters’ motivations and errors on an intellectual level
– that is, so we can gain intellectual empathy, and perhaps even try to change
the world a bit. That is what Brecht was on about. But in this Mother Courage, the feeling is missing,
the emotion is missing. That’s not to say that the cast don’t play with heart
and gusto, and there are some terrific moments here, but the whole piece feels
a bit subdued. Some scenes feel as though their natural (emotional) end point – i.e. their
point of release or catharsis – has been truncated in order to create the kind
of intellectual distance assumed to be propounded by Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt
concept. The result is a weirdly cold and underwhelming piece of theatre which
does not engage as much as it might; as much as it should.
Robert Cousins’ set
is a bare-bones white box rehearsal type set, with a pile of props and musical
instruments in the back corner. Alice
Babidge’s costumes – a mismatched assortment of faded and discarded
clothing, army jackets, and polyester – grounds the production in a dystopian
kind of near-present, a place where chaos is very much present and where peace
is only temporary. Mother Courage’s cart is here turned into a bright red
fast-food type truck, pulled by her two sons, and later by herself. Decked out
with speakers and lights, it at first seems a gaudy beast among the sparse set,
almost too big for Belvoir’s corner stage, but it blends in to become just
another part of the landscape, a lumbering elephant which no one dares to
attack. It is also, curiously, in near-pristine condition, even though Mother
Courage and her children have been tramping the countryside for the past
seventeen years selling wares from their cart – surely there would be more
evidence of the wars on it than this? As much as the design is effective in
conjuring a sense of chaos, dislocation, and displacement – we are in no
specific physical place, just as we are in no specific time period – it is also
discombobulating: we know there is a war going on, we know the landscape has
been ruined, but we don’t see (and barely hear) any evidence of it apart from a
bit of violence and a smattering of stage-blood. There is no grit to this
landscape – or perhaps not enough, besides a dirtying of clothes, occasional
rips and tears, a spattering of mud, blood and sweat on faces; even a
scattering of rubble, a gravel floor, a crumbling wall would have been enough
to give us a sense of the landscape Mother Courage and her children are
journeying across, the kind of terrain they battle with their cart.
Benjamin Cisterne’s
lighting is almost stark fluorescence at times, and richly coloured at others,
particularly during the musical numbers, and creates a sense of mood,
temperature, and ruin through a brief gesture of colour and/or brightness. Stefan
Gregory’s songs are tremendous – with several obvious (and welcome) nods to
Kurt Weill; however, as they are performed on stage with a piano, drums, guitars,
and at times an accordion, they tend to overwhelm the already-amplified voices.
The sound design – drones, rumbles, distant gunfire, explosions – while loud, are
still perhaps too quiet to be truly effective, truly indicative of chaos having
entered the theatre.
Led by Robyn
Nevin, Flack’s cast are all rather strong. Nevin’s Mother Courage is like a
wily old fox – she’s been around the traps long enough to know how to play the
game, and she gives as good as she gets, but there’s something missing from her
Courage, perhaps some of the dogged fierceness, which could make her fly.
Richard Pyros’ Eilif is strong and dignified, while Tom Conroy’s Swiss Cheese
is honest and sincere. Emele Ugavule’s Katrin, unable to speak, is the quiet
observer, the silent witness to the horrors of war; her final moments on the
roof of the hut are harrowing, and her subsequent death is nicely underplayed.
Paula Arundell’s Yvette is a husky-voiced singer; Lena Cruz is a fierce
sergeant whom I wouldn’t like to cross; Michael McStay’s passion and indignation
as the young soldier are moving, as is his subsequent resignation. Alex
Menglet’s General is gruff, all bluster and wind, but all too human; Hazem
Shammas’ clerk is quiet and dignified, his soldier fierce but compassionate.
Arky Michael’s cook is a loud energetic pipe-smoking rascal, but even his
resignation in the peacetime is moving. Anthony Phelan’s chaplain is a close
cousin to his Wally in Once In Royal
David’s City, and his song is quite moving.
*
In Flack’s
director’s notes, he talks about how Brecht had to invent new theatrical ways
to keep up with Europe ’s (and the world’s)
capacity for cruelty. “Whereas Oscar Wilde had perfected profound flippancy,
Brecht invented grim vaudeville… So when the time came to stare down the
marauding horror of another war, he didn’t blink. He wrote a musical fable
about a woman who was at her best in war… It is surprised and yet furious,
pessimistic and yet optimistic, awful and yet funny, grim and yet exuberant,
unforgiving yet unjudging… What could have been a simple anti-war tract
[became] a bizarre danse macabre – a
vision of the raw impulses of modernity.” This is where Mother Courage’s power comes from, where its capacity to move an
audience comes from.
In Flack’s Courage, however, the desire to show the
bleakness and cruelness of war on stage, as well as humanity’s strength and
optimism, the faith which keeps us going is a tall order for any production to
do. And while Flack, his cast and design team do succeed in some respects – a
strong contemporary translation, a strong cast, effective lighting – ultimately
it is not quite the epic celebration of humanity’s depth and breadth we were
expecting. Perhaps the most lasting impression in this Courage is the reminder that war can turn the tables on all of us, that
we can all become Mother Courage or Katrin in an instant, and chaos is only a
heartbeat away. Like Courage herself, Brecht’s play will keep dragging its cart
through the theatrical landscape long after this audience has passed away.
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