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MERYL'S COURAGE
Magazine / Source: Newark Star Ledger, August 2006 |
NEW YORK -- Glowing like a bug zapper, the star power of Meryl Streep is luring thousands into the middle of Central Park to see her illuminate the noxious struggles of "Mother Courage and Her Children."
It's a tribute to Streep's rep as a great actress that people are camping overnight to grab free tickets to the Public Theater's earnest, energetic production, which opened last night in the outdoor Delacorte Theater.
Star-gazers hoping for flossy summer entertainment have another think coming because Bertolt Brecht's 1949 play decries self-serving capitalism and the military-industrial monster. Past critics have declared it a masterpiece. Others consider it just so much communist-pacifist dogma disguised as drama.
Any way you assess it, the piece offers a serious trek through troubling themes. And that's fine, since so many of us are all too content to be merely -- and simply -- entertained rather than confront the grim complexities of this world.
Hopefully, a few souls who go through the hassle to witness Streep perform this challenging work will be struck and possibly stirred by its relevance.
Faithfully adapted into pungent English by "Angels in America" author Tony Kushner, "Mother Courage and Her Children" centers on a scrappy peddler who follows the armies during the Thirty Years' War that blazed between Catholic and Protestant forces across Germany in the middle 1600s.
Dragging her wagon of provisions around the smoking wastelands, Mother Courage (Streep) is a shrewd cookie bent on making a buck from the suffering throngs. So intent is Courage on haggling over petty deals that eventually all three of her neglected children perish amid episodic horrors.
"War isn't nice, you hope to shirk it,/You hope you'll find someplace to hide," sings the profiteering mother of us all. "But if you've courage you can work it./And put a tidy sum aside."
Songs in a drama regarding war? That's Brecht's trademark "epic" style, which incorporates songs, film and obvious stage devices to connect more with viewers' intellect than their emotions. Such tactics have become common practice over the last 60 years, and they suit director George C. Wolfe's flair for creating eclectic impressions.
What might this show's impact be had Wolfe and designer Riccardo Hernandez transferred the visuals of the story's 17th-century European location to the Middle East of today? Would that be too obvious? Instead, they and costume designer Marina Draghici jumble 400 years of clothes, ruins and weaponry to underline war's bleak timelessness.
The audience appears to get Brecht's mordant message at the Delacorte, responding the other night with applause to talk such as: "Who knows why we need liberty? What humans need is a mystery. But it's expensive -- liberty -- when you start exporting it to other countries."
Although Kushner's somewhat verbose text clocks in at three hours, Wolfe expertly drives events along with pell-mell movements of people meant to embody hectic times. Buildings burn. Masses silently perish. "Caroline, or Change" composer Jeanine Tesori provides a dozen jaunty, Weill-like tunes that sound creepy in such ugly circumstances.
Sporting a bushy beard, Kevin Kline rates relatively little stage time as Courage's matter-of-fact admirer, but he neatly utters his character's sardonic remarks. A smirking Austin Pendleton portrays a tippling minister in his usual cringing manner. Henna-crowned Jenifer Lewis' busy prostitute is a honky-tonk 'ho.
Lean, mean Frederick Weller is fierce as Courage's killing machine of a son (and he sings well, too). Geoffrey Arend contrasts as the thick-headed middle child. Alexandria Wailes' expressive face enlightens the mute daughter's feelings.
As for the stellar reason why most folks are out there in Central Park, Streep comes through with a memorable portrait of Mother Courage.
Her pale, luminous face looking hard and fearless under a military cap, Streep begins the character's journey with a cheery determination that turns bitter as the years roll by. Talking tough out of the side of her mouth, punctuating conversation with a mirthless "ha-ha," this is a wily Mother Courage of relentless energy. Aside from a few bawdy moments, there's no love and little sexual nature to this ageless survivor who lives for cold cash.
Does she rouse sympathy, this grasping devil? Yes, although only in the final moments as Courage mourns her last child in an eerie keening that curdles into a scream. Then all too soon she's cut her losses and is back aboard the wagon, chasing her next dollar.
The last time Streep acted on a stage was also at the Delacorte, in "The Seagull" during the summer of 2001. Five years later, Streep's appearance in a darker play -- and how many wars since? -- reflects on our more unsettled times.
