It is said that you can tell what a Yoruba woman is thinking by the way she wears her gele (the Nigerian head-dress). Here Carmen Munroe's tribal matriarch carries her wrap with a jauntiness which suggests fortitude, fearlessness and a healthy disregard of Brechtian tradition.
Breaking such a mould is no easy task - productions tamper with the established formula at their peril. But Oladipo Agboluaje's fine new adaption successfully slips under the security cordon, transplanting the action from the Thirty Years War to a contemporary civil conflict on a parched West African plain.
Agboluaje is certainly not afraid of playing fast and loose with the text, which he loads with references to CNN, the internet, Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears. Mother Courage is even heard to emphasise the importance importance of keeping it real.
But there is nothing about Josette Bushell-Mingo's fastmoving, carnivalesque production which does not seem purely Brechtian in its delectable sense of irony and deep, moral seriousness.
We are so used to Brecht revivals paying homage to Berliner Ensemble templates that the first thing to be lost is Brecht's intention that the audience has a good time. But Agboluaje and Bushell-Mingo make Mother Courage fun; which is not to suggest they trivialise the drama, but insist on its continued relevance.
Brecht wrote the piece in protest against Hitler's war preparations; Agboluaje points to present day African catastrophes such as AIDS.
Some excellent performances performances contribute to the unflagging energy. Carmen Munroe is magisterial in the title role, and there's some enjoyably sparky antagonism between Kevin Golding's unscrupulous chaplain and Jim Findley's unscrupulous cook.
As a dramatisation of seemingly endless war, can feel like a seemingly endless play; its moral cargo so heavy the wheels are bound to come off the sooner or later. The tatty trailer it hauls around is kind of vehicle you expect in a Lagos traffic jam, not the steppes of Central Europe; but it's sufficiently roadworthy to run and run.
· Until February 21. Box office: 0115-941 9419.
