'Mother Courage and Her Children'

Date: Monday 7 December 2009

Theatre is alive and very well at St Edmund's as last week's bravura performances of the pantomime 'Beauty and the Beast' clearly proved. Last night, many of last week's cast were on the other side of the stage, as a party of Sixth Form AS and A2 Theatre Studies students travelled with Mark Sell and Liz Sears to the National Theatre for the last night of Brecht's 'Mother Courage and her Chidren'.

In an adaptation by Tony Kushner, Fiona Shaw starred in the title role, in a contempoary setting of the inter-war piece - with occasional flashbacks to the Vietnam War of the 1960s. The play, an allegory on the brutality of war per se, is typically Brechtian in its quest for the 'v - effect' distancing the audience from the actions on stage, and seeking an objective viewpoint. This was brilliantly achieved through a range of effects, not least a pyrotechnic fireball, whose heat was felt at the back of the gallery!

Brecht plays a major part in the Theatre Studies specification for both groups; last summer's Lower Sixth exam piece was precisely that - Brechtian! So, despite late term tiredness, and a late finish at 10.30pm, it proved invaluable for all who made the trek up the M2, and back again.