EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
Brecht's anti-war parable gets acute update from Red Ladder
PIC CAP Outstanding: Pauline McLynn and Bea Webster
[Anthony Robling]
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
Mother Courage and Her Children
Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds
IT’S hard to think of many plays better suited to a promenade staging than Mother Courage and Her Children. Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 polemic about the futility of war does, after all, follow the titular anti-hero as she travels from town to town selling wares from her canteen.
In this production, which marks Red Ladder’s 50th anniversary, the audience becomes part of her travelling wagon, part of the sea of people displaced by conflict.
Similar stories
DOMINIC O’KEY recommends Arundhati Roy’s study of troubled mother/daughter relations
ANGUS REID, FIONA O’CONNOR, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Wham! 10 Days in China, Lesvia, Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and The Fires
ALAN MORRISON welcomes a new collection from the most imaginative and committed ecopoet of our time
GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring