Cottesloe

Anyone who has too often found the pleasures of Brecht obscured by the complexities of his dramatic theory should rush to this touring production of Frank McGuinness’s 1997 version by National Theatre Education. Directed by Sean Holmes in collaboration with the innovative multimedia theatre collective Filter, it’s a riot. Fresh, energetic, intelligent, it acknowledges the demands of epic theatre while remaining gleefully irreverent and bracingly modern.

At the production’s centre is Leo Chadburn’s Singer, who, as narrator and commentator, is a key component of the play’s “alienation” effects. A charismatic blend of Scott Walker and Jarvis Cocker, Chadburn has rock-star glamour and a riveting presence. His vocals arrestingly combine crooning and Sprechgesang , and the musical score, created by Chadburn, Chris Branch and Tom Haines, is wildly abrasive. The simple cloth screens that comprise Anthony Lamble’s set are covered in hectic black-and-white video imagery. The overall effect is thrillingly theatrical.

It’s an exciting and startling environment for Brecht’s parable of the poor, plucky servant girl Grusha (earthy, vigorous, huge-hearted Cath Whitefield) who, her country aflame with civil war, rescues the abandoned baby son of Natella, the governor’s wife.

Her act of compassion imperils her personal happiness and safety — and once the war ends, she finds herself before the corrupt judge Azdak, accused of kidnapping. Azdak, Solomon-like, decrees that to settle the matter, the women must compete to yank the child from a chalk circle drawn on the ground.

McGuinness’s version highlights the play’s ribald humour, and Holmes gives the action a knockabout comedy that sometimes tips disturbingly into violent grotesquerie.

Nicolas Tennant’s Azdak is ludicrous with his stained vest and open flies; but he is also a man of conscience, whose seat of judgment, in a land full of wounded soldiers, is a souped-up wheelchair. The hangman’s noose hangs behind him.

And silly and spoilt though Thusitha Jayasundera’s Natella is, her callousness chills as she rips from the circle a child that, played by a doll and voiced, into a microphone, by an actress, suddenly seems distressingly lifelike. It’s a moment of heart-stopping drama in a production where the moral message emerges powerfully and, above all, playfully. Brecht for the 21st century.

Box office: 020-7452 3000

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