Brecht's The Mother should be dead as a dodo. It is openly didactic. It espouses Marxism. And highlights of its heroine's political conversion include getting her party card and brandishing the red flag. Yet, as shown by Annie Castledine's luminous touring production, which I caught at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, the play not only commands our attention but tugs at the heart.
There is something perennially inspiring about plays in which an oppressed heroine finds her voice. Pelagea Vlassova is an illiterate widow who, in the Russia of 1905, is mainly concerned to cook her revolutionary son a decent bowl of soup: if she agrees to hand out leaflets it is simply to save him from arrest. What we witness, however, is Vlassova's transformation. She learns to read, is taught Marxist tenets and becomes an activist who, by the end, regards her son's death as a necessary sacrifice.
Nothing could be more unfashionable in an age such as ours where not only is Communism discredited but political disengagement is cool. Yet Brecht's heroine is so abundantly alive that our doubts are suspended. She abounds in wit and cunning so that, in a very funny classroom reading-session, she insists the teacher spells out useful words like "worker" and "exploitation" rather than "nest" and "fish".
Even I jib at Brecht's conclusion, in which the exhausted heroine is resurrected by the revolutionary fervour of 1917. But what gives the play its energy is Brecht's ability to show the stage-by-stage process of the mother's political awakening and to see her as a metaphor of progressive enlightenment: her cause may not be ours but no one could deny that it invigorates her.
It is a classically good Brecht production. Roles are democratically shared and action is all important. Didactic it may be, but it proves that Brecht had the rare theatrical gift of being able to teach delightfully.
Until April 22. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
