NOW THAT’S A KNIFE! Johnson, Overly, and Kim. |
War. What is it good for? More than absolutely nothing, the indomitable title character of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children would contend.
It’s a living, she shows us in the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre staging of the 1939 political drama. It was written when Nazis were invading Poland and Europe was hanging fire, about to explode into World War II. Mother Courage is the nickname that peddler Anna Frieling got when she drove her wagon through a city under bombardment because, she explains, the 50 loaves of bread she’d invested in were getting moldy.
Beginning in 1624, a half-dozen years into the Thirty Years War, we follow the adventure of her survival. She starts out with her two sons and mute daughter as their canteen travels with the Swedish Army over this border and that. Twelve blackout scenes snap us to attention or settle us down for a while, giving us discrete vignettes that we may pick over for object lessons or just letting us sit back and take it all in as colorful. This picaresque approach is aided by wall projections, announcing highpoints of the scene to come.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made Mother Courage a topical choice this summer, with the Public Theatre staging it, starring Meryl Streep, and the La Jolla Playhouse doing a production on the Left Coast.
On the small Gamm stage, watching Wendy Overly’s Mother Courage pull the wagon around in a tight circle at the end is as good a visual metaphor as any for the closed loop that the perpetuation of war tends to be.
Under the direction of Anthony Estrella, Overly doesn’t give us a Mother Courage who is larger than life, but rather one of typical human scale. Gamm goes for the honesty more than for the potential drama. Celebrated portrayals have given the character a heart as calloused as a punching bag, and made her come most alive when squeezing a customer for a few extra kopeks. The character called Mother Courage is malleable: a legitimate portrayal could have us watch the humanity ebb out of the woman as she loses dignity, not to mention loved ones, as convincingly as a portrayal of her inflating with understanding.
Overly gives us plenty of good moments, such as when she alternately praises son Eilif (Steve Kidd) and whaps the back of his head, or when she belts out a song for our edification. But I missed a clear arc of character development that would show her growth (or diminishment) from outset to end. I may be off base, but I think that this Rorschach blot of a role needs a central character trait — if only greed — from which her many decisions can stand against.
The broad outlines of wartime tribulations are clearly drawn with brisk slashing motions by this talented ensemble of 14 actors. Her second son, whom she calls Swiss Cheese (Ben Johnson), is put in charge of a regimental pay box, with the dangerous temptation that involves. Son Eilif is very good at waging war, not coming out of this one any more morally aware than when he went in. (As a sergeant observes, without wars, where are we going to get our moral standards?) Mute daughter Kattrin (Casey Seymour Kim) takes a camp-following whore (Rae Mancini) as a sartorial role model.
