A Daring Failure That's A Success, Kind Of

One of Ubuntu theater’s great successes is how they treat social justice as a theatrical project, a real art. Each play is a provisional response to a never-ending problem. There is not one truth, but many. There is not one situation or conflict, but multiple fronts. There is no solution, only the fight that continues from production to production.

And that brings us to their latest battle, three hours and twenty-minutes of Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war, epic, Mother Courage And Her Children. Under Emilie Whelan’s vigorous, though up-and-down, direction, the company makes a radical case for Brecht, testing the limits of his vision, what ambitious theater can do, and what Ubuntu can accomplish. Not everything is successful, but it is fascinating and bracing and unusual.

‘Mother Courage And Her Children’ runs through March 3 at Lisser Hall on the Mills College Campus in Oakland. For tickets and information click here. For the Full Review click here.