Mother Courage and Her Children

The other big news this week is Michelle Terry is going to leave the Globe next year after 10 years.

She's reprising her Mother Courage, which I absolutely loved there.

It made me feel like the Globe had been built for, to do Bertolt Brecht, which obviously it hasn't.

The clue is in the name.

Are we trying to make fun of something in particular? Are we making fun of the political climate of the United States in 2026 by using 1950s as a veil? That's a pretty common thing all through history.

I read Mother Courage with my students last spring.

It's like, okay, let's talk about how Brecht was... basically pointing out the rise of Hitler and Nazism, but by using 400 year old politics to tell the story.

Can we tell that story, like point at 2026 politics from the 1950s? And honestly, I don't know.

In the Studio brings you a trio from Berlin making music with a rare vintage synthesiser from Cold War East Germany.

In the Studio is on BBC World Service at 1.30pm, repeated at 10.30pm. Five actors reflect on their time playing the role of Mother Courage in the 1939 play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht.

Roleplay is on Radio 4 at 4pm.

Radio 3 in Concert presents the Hallé Orchestra, marking the 30th anniversary of Manchester's Bridgewater Hall, with music from Liszt, Beethoven, and featuring the first performance of Symphony No. 6 by James Macmillan, commissioned specially by the Hallé.

Brecht.

We did the American premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.

And this was, to me, a revelation I didn't know about

Brecht.

Anything goes with Melba Moore.

Mother Courage and Her Children, directed by Pulitzer winner Tony Kushner.

I didn't know that about you.

That's very cool.

But but my favorite play of his, I think some of his plays are quite bad.

Mother Courage, which everybody loves, is awful.

But if you want to read a good Bertolt Brecht play, go read Galileo.

Galileo was about the persecution of the guy who was like, hey, the earth is not at the center of the world.