War of Triangles

Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children [Kurázsi mama és gyermekei] at the National Theatre

Abstract

Bertolt Brecht, the author, said that the main message of his play was “[t]hat in wartime the big profits are not made by little people. That war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes human virtues fatal even to their possessors. That no sacrifice is too great for the struggle against war.”1 It was in this Brechtian spirit that on 12 January 2024 the National Theatre premiered Mother Courage and Her Children, directed by the world-renowned Greek theatre director Theodoros Terzopoulos, with Nelli Szűcs’s benefit performance in a mystery play of a Godless religious war, in the role of the protagonist who, dressed in a flamenco dress, exchanges morality for profit.