“Mother Courage and Her Children” reviewed by Jacob Davis

***** Of all the plays written by Bertolt Brecht, the German dramatist whose works heavily influenced all subsequent non-naturalistic theatre, Mother Courage and Her Children, written in 1939, is probably the purest and best-known example of his style. It has songs, self-aware archetypal characters, pervasive dark humor, and extremely bleak social commentary. A production by Trap Door Theatre, directed by Max Truax based on a translation by Eric Bentley and featuring original music composed by Jonathan Guillen, graced Chicago last year. Now it’s back for an extremely limited run, with Holly Cerney reprising the iconic titular role as a cynical but loving mother trying to scratch out a living for herself as a camp follower during the devastating Thirty Years War. And while I’ll spend the rest of this review explaining why, the short version is that I can hardly imagine a better performance of this text.
At the beginning of the play, the war is not even in its second decade, yet has already exhausted central Europe. One recruiter complains that it has become difficult to even find able-bodied men, while a career officer responds that he doesn’t see why everybody is supposed to be upset about the current state of affairs, since it seems more orderly to him than peacetime. Enter Anna Fierling, a Swedish woman going by the name “Mother Courage,” and her three adult children who help her pull the wagon from which she sells booze and whatever else she can barter to the soldiers on any side. Her name is a veiled joke, as she says that if leaders were good, nobody would need to be courageous, they could just be ordinary. Her daughter, Kattrin (Emily Nichelson) is mute, but her sons, Eilif (David Lovejoy) and Swiss Cheese (Rashaad Bond), are among the few young men who are still military material, and they end up joining on the Protestant side. This is extremely distressful to Mother Courage, who had wanted to keep them safe, although her sons reason that soldiers are safer than civilians and fighting is a better living than serving as their mother’s human oxen. One of Mother Courage’s many hustles is fortune telling, in which she always tells the client they will die, and this time she predicts all three of her children’s deaths.
Brecht’s style wasn’t to keep people in suspense. Each scene is prefaced with a summary of what’s about to happen. And yet, despite his efforts to keep the audience alienated from his characters, I found Trap Door’s cast gave deeply moving performances. Cerney in particular deserves praise for Mother Courage’s charm, patter, canniness, and tenacity, but also for her love. Despite being a world-weary schemer, Mother Courage is also a person who offers her coat to a stranger she doesn’t particularly like and sacrifices her well-being for her children. The rest of the cast also is adept at the variety of skills Truax’s direction requires of them, including physical comedy, switching between characters, and playing off each other while in unusual stage pictures. During one monologue about his actions during a raid on enemy civilians, David Lovejoy plays Eilef with an affecting combination of pride, shame, shyness, and revelry in his commander’s praise, and Nena Martens’ stumbling around as the alcoholic prostitute Yvette nearly had me dizzy just from watching her.
Jonathan Guillen’s original music is one of the show’s most important elements, being what gives the production a classic Brechtian flavor and keeps its energy high throughout the run. Trap Door shows are generally fast-paced and physically demanding, and while this production, at nearly two hours, is slightly longer than is usual for the company’s style, it’s still an intense experience. Mother Courage takes place over several years, and I got a strong sense of time passing as widespread destruction became the characters’ new normal. One of the most troubling moments in the play comes when a truce is announced for peace negotiations, and the characters who had once denounced the war all react with panic at the possible loss of their livelihoods and identities. Although often described as a “war profiteer” because she could have stayed in Sweden instead of leading her family into a conflict zone to sell whiskey, Mother Courage is not responsible for the war, nor can her lice-ridden, constantly hungry existence really be called profiting. And yet, the woman who had named herself in reference to her unusual ability to see the big picture of unjust social forces not only got caught up in them, she got attached to them. Brecht’s social commentary often points out problems without offering solutions, so it’s not something everybody’s going to always be in the mood for. But for those who enjoy “Epic Theatre,” or who want to see something very different from other forms of storytelling, this production is an outstanding example.

Mother Courage and Her Children will continue at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W Cortland Ave, Chicago, thru March 29, at the following times:
Thursdays: 8:00 pm
Fridays: 8:00 pm
Saturdays: 8:00 pm
Running time is one hundred and ten minutes with no intermission.
Tickets are $31 with 2 for 1 admission on Thursdays. Special group rates are available. Visit Trap Door Theatre or call 773-384-0494 or email boxofficetrapdoor@gmail.com

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