In August of 2006, the Public Theatre in New York City presented Mother Courage and Her Children, the hard-hitting 1939 anti-war drama by German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht. The production boasted a new translation by the American playwright Tony Kushner and starred Meryl Streep in the difficult lead role of an itinerant trader who peddles her wares during the seventeenth century Thirty Years War in Northern Europe. George Wolfe directed the play.
This thought-provoking documentary by John Walter explores the major themes of the play: war, consumerism, Marxism, and the need for societal change when humans become so malleable that they can be turned into killing machines by those in power. Jay Cantor, a novelist who teaches a course on Marx and Brecht talks about the meaning of Mother Courage and Her Children. The documentary also takes a rounded and revealing look at the life and creative work of Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956) including his exile from Germany in 1933, his time in Hollywood, his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and his return to Berlin to stage Mother Courage and Her Children with his wife in the lead role. Barbara Brecht-Schall, his daughter, provides up-close and personal details about her father. And his friend and collaborator Carl Weber reminisces about Brecht's creative process, postulating that if the man had been born in our times, he would have been "a kind of Bob Dylan figure."
One of the major delights in this documentary is Meryl Streep's comments on the play and its significance for her. In special behind-the-scenes glimpses of rehearsals, we sense the enormity of her role as Mother Courage; she shouts, sings, and struts her time on the stage with great intensity. She is a woman who tragically commits all of herself to her business and suffers the consequences. One of the commentators on the play calls it "a howl of despair," and that is an apt summary.
Everything said about Mother Courage and Her Children has great relevance to the war in Iraq and the indifference of so many American citizens to the carnage brought on by the engines of war and the greed of big business.
