Red Ladder is 50 this year. For a company that sprang from the radical socialist theatre movement of 1968, it makes sense to celebrate the anniversary by getting together a professional and community ensemble, taking over a disused warehouse and putting on Lee Hall’s translation of this powerful antiwar, anti-capitalist play by Bertolt Brecht (written in 1939, with collaboration from Margarete Steffin, in response to Germany’s invasion of Poland). I wish it didn’t make sense. I wish the play were as dusty and done with as the 17th-century’s thirty years’ war where the action is set.
In this terrific promenade production, though, the tale of the trader Mother Courage, with her cart, trying (and failing) to maintain her three children by profiting from conflict, feels shockingly contemporary. And, yes, I do mean “feels”. That particularly Brechtian tension, between awakening in the audience dispassionate analysis while engaging us in the fate of the characters, is tautly controlled by director Rod Dixon and his company. This is partly achieved by implicating us physically in the action; partly through the mix of half-masked and non-masked characters (all vivid, vibrant), of sign language integrated into the actors’ actions; and, in no small part, by the epic performance from Pauline McLynn as Mother.
The actors (scattered among us, as well as on the playing areas) sing of “moving on” (Boff Whalley’s music to Beccy Owen’s musical direction). Courage’s cart rolls. Together we walk over rough concrete floors. At each new site, the three constants are Mother Courage, her deaf-and-dumb daughter Kattrin (excellent Bea Webster) and the cart. McLynn’s Mother, leaning against her cart, seems as one with it: sturdy, practical, implacable – this is her family’s livelihood; it must be saved, at whatever cost. Courage’s sacrifices become terrible, but McLynn doesn’t play for sympathy. With enormous actorly integrity, she roots the character in her actions. I wept equally for Courage and for the circumstances that shaped her and that still shape us.
• At the Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds, until 20 October
