The trouble with plays about stoical endurance is that it takes no small amount of stoicism to endure them. And Brecht's parable of a doughty peddler dragging her cart across the battlefields of Europe is the definition of a long haul.
There is little doubt Brecht regarded slowness as a virtue, and Mother Courage is perhaps the greatest dissemination of the inertia of war and the opportunism of "little people" for whom permanent conflict becomes a means of turning a profit. Above all, it reminds us that every decisive political advantage of the Thirty Years War was gained at the expense of 29 years of standing around.
The Chaplain in the play observes that "God's mills grind exceeding slow" and there are points where Stephen Unwin's English Touring Theatre production grinds exceedingly slowly indeed. Brecht is lauded for his alienation effects - and there is certainly nothing quite so alienating as the insertion of the incredibly tedious Song of Solomon just as the audience is beginning to wonder if they will be home before midnight.
There are compensations along the way - the dramatic pulse quickens whenever Tom Georgeson's wily old reprobate of a Cook is on stage; and the most affecting performance comes from the character who says nothing at all: the mute Kattrin, played with moon-faced pathos by the excellent Jodie McNee.
In the title role, Diana Quick's jutting jaw and sharp vowels suggests a unique, 17th-century equivalent of Mother Chav: an aggressive loudmouth who has children by three different fathers and flogs knock-off goods from the back of a wagon. It's a performance of stamina, though it captures Mother Courage's cynical carapace more effectively than her inner compassion.
The image of an indestructible woman yoked to her cart is one of the most potent in modern theatre; yet this production fails to avoid it becoming a bit of a drag.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568. Then touring.
