IN the opening scene of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children a recruiting officer comments: "It takes a while to get a good war going, but once you start it, it goes like shit off a shovel".
The work is playing, in a new, razor-sharp translation by Lee Hall (no expletives deleted) at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford this week.
Officially it is set in the 30-years' war, which ravaged Germany and much of central Europe in the 17th century. But it is about all wars - it's Kosovo, Chechnya, the Somme, Vietnam or the Crimea - with universal soldiers dressed in all styles and periods related to their trade.
They could have strolled over from Belfast or out of Dad's Army in their shambolic fashion. The officers, by contrast, tend towards the Napoleonic, with vanity to the fore. It takes a poor general to create a scenario where valiant deeds are needed, we are reminded.
Amid the seemingly endless conflict, the "little people" scratch out their survival under a code of morality which has evolved out of necessity, with few holds barred.
Queen of the pile is Mother Courage, surviving through ruthless bartering fuelled by an overriding zeal to protect her adult offspring - the gung-ho Eilif, simple "Swiss Cheese", and the sad, speechless Kattrin - from the ravages of war. It's not just any war, but a war approved by God, we are assured, as protestants from Scandinavia bash catholics from central Europe and vice versa.
The epithet comes, she explains, from a time when she drove her cart across a battlefield to sell a load of bread before it went mouldy - an indication of how commerce has taken her over. The cart was once pulled by a horse, but that has long since died and the precious centre of their living is now propelled by human power.
The tale is told in a series of cameos, set several years apart, rich in comedy and irony, with mercurial mood swings which at times take the breath away. One minute the wit is flowing, the audience relaxing to a piece of lighthearted banter, then with little warning stark and bitter tragedy swings in.
A set of scaffolding and pulleys, plain sheets and rickety sheds, lit with precision and economy, serve to enhance the moods, augmented by bitter-sweet accordion music, sometimes solo and sometimes accompanying the simple songs which are part of the play.
There is not a single weakness in the Shared Experienced company's cast, but there is one towering strength which is the diminutive Kathryn Hunter in the title role.
Hardly offstage throughout most of the two-and-three-quarter hours of the piece, she barters and bullies, wheedles and wisecracks her way into dominance of all around her.
But her soul has been warped too far and when moments are crucial she bargains too far. Although the goods on her cart build to a point of opulence she is the eventual loser, though not, as she at one time fears, to peace taking the bottom out of the market.
Peace, when it comes, is brief, but not too brief for soldiers to be executed for deeds for which they had last week been honoured.
It is, at the start of the second act, just "a breather", enough for characters such as the protestant chaplain who has taken refuge with Mother Courage while the catholics are in the ascendancy, to rediscover their normal selves for a fleeting moment.
War is like "most things," the chaplain muses. "Turn your back on it and it falls to rack and ruin." But you can bet your life that "the best minds in Europe will be working away to jump-start it back to life."
Sure enough, the guns suddenly start up again in another round of the powers-that-be's urge to decimate the innocent, god-fearing "little people".
On its way, via Oxford, Brighton and Yorkshire, to the New Ambassadors in the West End in late April, Mother Courage runs at the Yvonne Arnaud until tomorrow (Saturday).
Jacky Billington
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