After more than a decade, theatre audiences of Delhi, who admire Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children”, were able to witness it again which was featured recently at Aadyam Theatre Festival at Kamani auditorium recently. One of the versions of the play was in Hindi as “Himmat Mai” which was directed by Amal Allana with legendary actor Manohar Singh in the lead role of Mother Courage. A great production, Singh’s Mother Courage was memorable. Another Hindi version staged and directed by Usha Gangoli, who played the central role, made a strong anti-war statement. The present version is an English adaptation by Eric Bentley.
Written in 1939, “Mother Courage and Her Children”, is considered as an all-time great political play which severely indicts war. The production under the review was directed by Quasar Thakore Padamsee which too captures some parts of its force intact.
The original play is set in the 17th Century Europe during the 30 years war. The central character is Mother Courage who makes her living by selling stuff of daily use to soldiers at the front. For her, war is a source of her livelihood and her three children — two boys and one girl — who are fathered by different men, help her. The war is between Catholics and Protestants. She supports the cause of neither party and her only concern is that war must continue. Despite her best efforts she barely manages to survive and support her children. Her wagon is the store of her merchandise which is being pulled by her sons.
Losing offsprings
She keeps on pulling the wagon along with the movements of army from one front to another. In due course, Mother Courage loses her all the three offsprings. The elder son is conscripted in the armed forces and is awarded for killing cattle of a farmer while the war is going on. A temporary truce ensues; he kills cattle of another farmer. Far from receiving award, he is killed for his act.
The second son is also killed by rival army for hiding the cash box. Even after the death of her two sons, Mother Courage has not learnt any lesson about the destructive nature of war. With her dumb daughter she does her business, trying to get maximum profit. Finally, a situation arises; her dumb daughter is also killed by a soldier while she is beating a drum to awake townspeople about the arrival of rival forces.
A scene from “Mother Courage and Her Children”
Left alone, Mother Courage pulls the wagon with merchandise and sells to the needy soldiers. In her efforts she is relentless, hoping to earn profit. She is totally blind to the fact that finally the war will destroy everything.
The adapted version in English directed by Quasar claims to have set “somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, sometime in the foreseeable future,” identifying the warning parties as Extremists and Fundamentalists. He has not defined these Extremists and Fundamentalist forces. Brecht's masterpiece is based on objective reality of history. In 1979, Fritz Bennewitz staged a few vital scenes of “Mother Courage” for National School of Drama. In this scene he showed the war between Indian liberation army and British colonial army. This idea brought the play nearer to the Indian audience. The pace of Quasar's production is slow. The director has used screen upstage which should have been used to depict vast landscape devastated by war suggesting the endless trek of Mother Courage in the hope that war will bring profit to her. This kind of depiction would have evoked strong anti-war feelings in the audience and the utter futility of Mother Courage's quest for profit. Some directors believe that a revolving stage is most suitable for staging “Mother Courage” depicting vast space and time. Fritz has solved this issue by staging it on the open lawns of Bahawalpur House with enough space for the Mother Courage to move from one locale to another with her wagon.
Remarkable restraint
In the main role of Mother Courage veteran theatre and film personality Arundhati Nag gives an impressive performance, displaying remarkably restrained artistry when she is questioned to identify the body of her dead son. She looks at the body of her son penetratingly and with a pause says “no” and the unclaimed body is thrown away. In another sequence, the same strong instinct of survival compels her to remove the insignia of the defeated army and replace it with the winning one. Once again, with the same heartless detachment she watches the body of her dumb daughter and continues her trek. Bhavna Pani as the dumb daughter of Mother Courage who is ruined by the brutality of war and finally shot dead for her attempt to make her people aware of the arrival of rival military force is eloquent enough to expresses her anguished soul through her gestures, movements and facial expressions. Trupti Khamkar as a sex worker, and Asif Ali Beg in a variety of roles act admirably.
