War Sucks: Brecht's Mother Courage @ Youngstown

Edge Theatre Ensemble's production of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and All Her Children at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center runs through Sun., July 20. Tix available online.

At some point around the beginning of hour three of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and All Her Children, you're finally overwhelmed. Perhaps it was the hot black box theatre, perhaps it was the uncomfortable seats, but as the play reaches it painful conclusion, despite the occasional weaknesses of the production, we found ourselves fighting back tears. That's nothing if not the sign of a great play.

As translated by David Hare, Brecht's anti-war masterpiece set in the Thirty Years War of the early 17th century feels as contemporary as his own play Stuff Happens, which had a fine production at ACT last year. And indeed, the only problem we really had with this show was that it felt like yet another futile attempt to make a statement against the war. There are those of us who oppose the war, and even more (yes, more) who know that war is hell and comes at the expense of the average joe, but at some point we can all surely agree that getting together to commiserate our shared opposition accomplishes nothing, and producing a play on such grounds isn't likely to bring in a lot of people from the opposite camp to get themselves swayed.

That said, the production itself was remarkably good for a small company (Edge Theatre Ensemble) with limited resources, and due to some fine performances packed a wallop. The lovely Annie Katica Green's turn as the lice-ridden prostitute Yvette was memorable and hilarious, as was Carter Rodriguez's role as the pipe-smoking cook/pit orchestra drummer who led her astray. But the entire production was more or less in orbit around Betty Campbell, the talented and attention-grabbing leading lady. Campbell's Mother Courage is every bit as loathsome and amoral as the character demands, and then some. Year after bloody year, Mother Courage has her assorted children drag her cart of cheap goods around Mitteleuropa, following the armies of the Thirty Years War, selling odd shirts, terrible food, and plentiful booze.

The problem arises from the fact that Campbell is so staid, her voice resolute in that bitter old aunt sort of way, that she overwhelms everyone else. Her cynical and self-justifying reasoning typically wins the day, and honestly we left the play less with a fearsome loathing of war-profiteers like Halliburton than we did sort of appreciating where they come from. But the penultimate scene of the play--where someone finally, after three hours, does something decent and humane--is so overwhelming in its cacophony of noise and frenetic activity that Mother Courage's hideous beliefs are rendered vapid and empty.