By Joy Watters at Dundee Rep

GERRY MULGREW was last seen at Dundee Rep in the title role of Peer Gynt, giving an award-winning performance, and now returns with another classic, Mother Courage, this time as director.

He has for many years successfully embraced the European way of working with an ensemble and in this new production (in a translation by John Willett) takes it and makes an instant connection with the audience, and moreover, maintains it.

The challenges of Mother Courage are well-known; first it is long, three hours long, and if a director and cast are not on their mettle it can seem much, much longer.

No such problems here though, as the ensemble uses experienced actors plus young graduates and drama students who all pull beautifully together in tackling Brecht’s anti-war epic.

Set in the Thirty Years War of the early 17th century as Protestants fight Catholics across Europe, the play shows Anna Fierling—known as Mother Courage—stalking the battlefields and trading from her wagon.

Opportunist, turncoat, she’ll quickly hoist the flag of the victor on her wagon to keep profits up. She insists she only wants to keep her children safe but loses them all. For her, war is good business and peace will ruin her.

Ann Louise Ross acquits herself beautifully in the complex role of the unloveable mother. Courage is a gritty businesswoman with a homespun philosophy that allows her to justify her actions.

Ross captures all that plus Courage’s ability to draw others to her with utter conviction in a performance that sees her on stage for almost the entire play.

It is not a work without humour and indeed Brecht’s juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy are integral.

As Courage’s companions, the cook and the chaplain, Robert Paterson and Callum Cuthbertson both bring a fine comic edge to the examination of who wins in the business of war.

Naomi Wilkinson’s steely grey set conveys the cold hard face of war and the music by John Harris underpins the action with chilly martial sounds and a clutch of songs.

Mother Courage runs until September 27.