Bertolt Brecht’s classic, Mother Courage, is about a female war profiteer who drags a wagon of supplies through no man’s land and sells them to bedraggled soldiers. During the story, she loses both her children and she discovers that war is not as marvellous as she previously thought.

This spiritual journey evidently mattered to Brecht, who was born in 1898 in Augsburg, and who greeted the outbreak of the first world war with enthusiasm only to become disillusioned by the mechanised slaughter of the trenches. His play is aimed at wrong-headed militaristic numbskulls who believe that war is good rather than bad. If you already hold pacifist views, you may find his tutorial a little simplistic.

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The first half takes a while to get started as Mother Courage and her family arrive at a military checkpoint and behave like cocky film stars stuck in a provincial town. They stride around giving orders to armed guerillas and forcing them to buy overpriced wares from their inventory of supplies. In reality, Mother Courage would be executed on the spot while her belongings were........

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