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I saw the 5pm performance of and her Children presented by The Attic Collective at SoHo Playhouse earlier today as part of their 2026 Fringe Encore Series, and it left me shaken, in the best possible way. This one hour and twenty two minute reimagining of Mother Courage and Her Children is riveting, heart crushing, and deeply thought provoking. It is one of those shows that grabs you quickly and refuses to let go.
Written by Rosie Glen-Lambert and Hailey McAfee, and her Children takes Brecht’s Mother Courage and drops it squarely into modern America by reimagining Anna Fierling as a public facing NRA spokesperson. The show places her in a suspended, almost purgatorial space where time stops and there is nowhere left to hide behind talking points or rehearsed rhetoric. The audience becomes the stand in for her own conscience as she is forced to confront the cost of the role she has chosen to play. This is not a literal retelling of Brecht’s story, but a psychological and moral reckoning that asks what happens when belief, career, and survival collide. The central tension is brutally simple and deeply unsettling: has she already given up everything that truly matters, and if so, will she continue anyway?
The entire piece rests on the shoulders of Hailey McAfee, and she is extraordinary. This is a demanding solo performance, emotionally and physically, and she meets it head on. She moves between public persona and private reckoning with precision, showing us a woman who is articulate, defensive, terrified, and deeply fractured. At no point does the play let her off the hook, and McAfee does not soften the character to make her easier to like.
What makes the show so powerful is that it refuses easy answers. It asks how much a person is willing to give to the cause they represent publicly. How far does loyalty go when it starts to cost lives. How much self betrayal can be justified by ideology, career, or belief. And ultimately, how much is a woman willing to sacrifice. Her values? Her humanity? Her children?
The Brechtian roots are clear, not just in the source material but in the way the play constantly reminds you that you are watching a constructed argument. And yet it never feels cold. The emotional weight lands hard. The questions linger. I left the theater gutted, thoughtful, and grateful that work like this is being made.
and her Children is not comfortable theater. It is urgent theater. It demands engagement and moral reflection, and it earns both. This is the kind of work that reminds me why small, daring theatre companies matter so much.
