Mother Courage and Her Children

At the website of The Norwegian Theatre the following, among other things, is written about Mother Courage:

"Within a cold, naked stage image Brecht's well-known songs are given brand new music, performed by a black metal band, onstage. The composer Morten Bergeton Iversen, better known as Teloch, (guitarist of bands such as Mayhem and Nidingr), replaces Paul Dessau's original music. The German director wished for a modern, brutal and noisy musical expression to pull us into the horrors of war.

(...)

The action of the play takes place during the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and was created shortly before World War II began for real, when Brecht himself fled the Nazi regime, in some of the same areas. Mother Courage travels in her camping wagon with her small-time trade, sells drink, weapons and what she can get her hands on to the soldiers and the warlords. She knows the character of war, she knows when to sell and when to wait, so that her goods go up in price. She makes money from the war, but it costs her dearly. War often puts her to moral tests in which money and survival oppose saving lives. Can one live off war, without becoming a victim of it oneself, physically and morally? What does this mean to us Norwegians, who among other things live from oil money and weapon sales? Aren't we war profiteers, too? Is war at all an important motor in the capitalist system?"

SOURCES:

The National Library of Norway, performance program transferred to Sceneweb 21.10.2015.

The Norwegian Theatre, www.detnorsketeatret.no, 17.02.2015, http://www.detnorsketeatret.no/framsyningar/mor-courage-og-barna-hennar/

Import from the Scenekunst.no list of openings 17.12.2014

Lillian Bikset, Dagbladet, Hard Courage, 14.02.2015:

"She sells for prices she could not have demanded during peacetime. But the war also costs her dearly. It corrupts her. It takes all her loved ones away from her. This way Brecht has made her into a double political metaphor. Mother Courage is the reason to war and the consequence of war. She is capitalism. She represents the gain, but also the loss, the courage (giving her the alias) but also the lack of power. (...) In Ane Dahl Torp's interpretation of the role the protective shell of cynicism is conveyed, but she also demonstrates the certain knowledge beneath the shell, the certain knowledge of the need for protection."

Therese Bjørneboe, Aftenposten, Mor Courage: Antikrigsteater i Black metal-drakt (literally: Mother Courage: Anti-war theatre in black metal clothing), 17.02.2015:

"Here the merging of war, profits and religion is experienced as relevant and valid. Not just because it is reflected in the wars of our age, but also because the Black Metal wrapping gives the performance a quality of something cult-like. As in a Catholic mass there is something that tranquilises the senses in the monotony of the music, prolonged in a production that is massive as well as monotonous. But isn't that telling of war too? Between every kick of adrenaline there is a long wait. (...) Ane Dahl Torp has her trap filled with gold teeth, and zombie-like eye makeup. A bloodsucker and a war hyena in the mode of pop."