"Mother Courage" - The most boring play in the world

"Mother Courage and Her Children" really can be the most boring play in the world. Who would not know today that war is terrible, that it costs the lives of some and fill the coffers of others. You can show all that with the work of Bertolt Brecht, written in exile, but you could show a lot more, and more interesting things at that.

The author himself noted in his work journal that war was a huge field for him - "not unlike the fields of the new physics". With the cool gaze of a scientist studying the movement of the smallest particles, this is how one could approach “Mother Courage”: as a curious explorer of the social, not as a moral trumpeter. You have to know the laws of motion if you want to get a grip on what goes on in the world.

When Brecht returned to Germany after 1945 and founded his own theater with the Berliner Ensemble, "Mother Courage" was one of his greatest successes. Helene Weigel pulled the cart across the stage, which is still on display in the Brecht House in Buckow. "Die Weigel", as it was always called, played big - and all the other actors with her.

When the theaters were closed due to Corona, the Berliner Ensemble conjured up a film recording from the archive. And although in black and white and with a thin tone, one could finally see that something big had been achieved here - in Brecht's own production. Worked perfectly down to the last detail, Brecht showed himself to be a theater maker, someone who had mastered the art of the stage.

The Berliner Ensemble went on an international tour with “Mother Courage”, and with this production it spread its good reputation all over the world. In Paris audiences were blown away, including a young theater critic who thought he had witnessed a theatrical revolution. "That is Brecht's great contribution: his theater dispenses with the sermon and is therefore much more powerful," noted the enthusiastic spectator. His name was Roland Barthes.

He later remarked: "I have always loved the theater very much, and yet I hardly ever go there anymore". On the contemporary stages, which are trying very hard to fall behind Brecht, one is seldom spared the sermon. One understands Barthes only too well.

On Sunday, "Mother Courage" premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, directed by Oliver Frljić, who is now part of the artistic director of the house. Frljić means well with the viewer. On the stage he stacks corpses over corpses, naked, emaciated, packed in garbage bags or in everyday clothes. Anyone who didn't know until then that this was a play about war and that war is a terrible thing with many deaths is now informed.

On the other hand, Frljić trusts his audience that they are familiar with the play and the plot, because on stage - thanks to the cut version and the way of playing - not much coherence can be seen. And so that it doesn't get too easy, the actors change roles every few minutes. Anyone who doesn't lose their bearings in the process has definitely earned the premiere sparkling wine.

One can of course be of the opinion that "Mother Courage" is a single indictment of the war and as such a kind of "play of the hour", but this opinion makes for bad evenings at the theatre. Which don't get any better when banners are unrolled and slogans shouted during the final applause. It's a good thing that we were once again reminded on this occasion that "Mother Courage" can be the most boring piece in the world if you mistake it for a sermon. Now you know what works and what doesn't - and what you can do better.

Brecht is said to have once said that ultimately he was more interested in the theater than in changing the world. That's what you often wish for in contemporary theater.