She rolled in on a wagon with three others. You could tell she was a star because of the hearty ovation welcoming her entrance, something rare in a theatre production, but save that fact, she was fairly unremarkable in appearance.

Meryl Streep is currently starring in a production run of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children at Central Park for their Shakespeare in the Park summer series. I feel so fortunate to live in a city that allows me to see the greatest actress of our time play an incredibly powerful role in a small ampitheatre setting, all for free. I woke up at 5AM and trekked over to Astor Place to stand in line until 1 o’clock for tickets. Luckily, I had my roommate and one of my best friends with me–although it must be said that standing in line with anyone for six or seven hours will test the fortitude of your relationship–so it wasn’t so awful.

The power of this play was intense, and the ease of correlation to the world today was eerie. Brecht wrote a story inspired by World War II and the invasion of Poland in 1939, and set during the Thirty Years’ War of the 1600s. Thematically, though, it could just as well have been a result of outrage toward the war in Iraq.

I won’t let you spoil my war for me. Destroys the weak, does it? Well, what does peace do for ‘em, huh? War feeds its people better.

My favorite thing about Mother Courage is that the title character, played by Meryl, isn’t a sympathetic role. She travels around with a supply wagon and profits off the war, praying that it never ends, yet her journey and the tragedies she runs into–notably, losing each of her three children at various stages in time–is so reflective of the problems with war, and the consequences of each way of dealing of war: apathy, greed, ignorance, genuine courage. I think she resonates more in the end as a result of her multiple dimensions, in a way that wouldn’t exist had we been rooting for her all along.

Tony Kushner, probably best known for his immensely moving Angels in America, adapted Brecht’s text for this play in a way that was very well-suited for a modern audience. The humor was a little overdone in the beginning, but it modulated as the show progressed into a dark humor that didn’t take away from the tragedy of the story.

Finally, it has to be said: I put great expectations on Meryl Streep, ones that are pretty impossible to match, and she almost never disappoints me (I didn’t like A Prairie Home Companion, bu that’s hardly her fault). Mother Courage is probably one of the hardest roles ever written in that she is a part of almost every minute of the three-hour play, and her characters traits must constantly be balanced so delicately. As noted previously, she is not a classic or obvious sympathetic character, but in spite of her indignation and greed, the audience is still supposed to learn from, and relate to, her. By the end, she has lost everything–her kids, her money, her men–but you share in her pride as the broken woman struggles to pull her cart and continue on her journey, following the war that is both her livelihood and her doom.