************************* Following their highly successful tour of the critically acclaimed Hamlet, English Touring Theatre make a welcome return with Mother Courage And Her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece and one of the most powerful anti-war plays of all time. Featuring the much-loved actress Diana Quick in the title role, Mother Courage runs in the main house from 21-25 November. The enterprising and plucky Mother Courage confronts waste, greed, profiteering, indifference, hypocrisy, mendacity, arrogance and catastrophic loss in her irreverent and resilient journey for survival. Throughout a seemingly endless era of war, Mother Courage doggedly follows a succession of faceless armies across the blasted terrain. She jeers and consoles, bargains and cheats. But from her improvised canteen wagon, she always supplies her hodgepodge of trinkets and wares; though, one by one, her children are lost to the very violence from which she profits. Brecht’s work is performed on the 50th anniversary of his death in a year when the National Theatre staged Galileo and The Young Vic are planning further celebrations. Mother Courage And Her Children is performed in a powerful, gutsy, comic, colloquial, and extraordinary adaptation by Michael Hofman who has twice won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (Translators’ Association). Brecht’s songs are translated by John Willett who worked with him on the Berliner Ensemble’s 1956 London programme and has played an important role in introducing Brecht’s work to British audiences. English Touring Theatre is renowned for the clarity and style of its work. The play’s director, Stephen Unwin, Artistic Director of the company and director of this production, is a winner of the Shakespeare Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Award, and Mother Courage stays true to the company’s ethos of producing raw, direct and passionate theatre. Over the past three years York Theatre Royal has presented ETT's acclaimed work, including: Twelfth Night, Romeo & Juliet; King Lear with Timothy West, Ghosts with Diana Quick; John Gabriel Borkman with Michael Pennington, Linda Bassett and Gillian Barge, and last year, Hamlet with Ed Stoppard and Anita Dobson. Taking the title role is Diana Quick whose varied career in film, television and theatre includes Julia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited, ETT’s Ghosts, for which she received the TMA and Manchester Evening News Awards for best actress, After Mrs Rochester and more recently You Never Can Tell co-starring with Edward Fox. Diana is also a patron of ETT. The play’s impressive cast will also include Tom Georgeson (A Fish Called Wanda and the hit BBC series Between The Lines), Samuel Clemens, Michael Cronin, Patrick Drury, Daniel Goode, Gina Isaac, Youssef Kerkour (The Path to 09/11), Barry McCormick (the forthcoming Miss Potter, featuring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor), Jodie McNee, Wale Ojo, Gordon Taggart, Janet Whiteside (the recent film Pride and Prejudice) Tickets for this eagerly awaited production are priced £8.00 - £18.00 (Matinee tickets are £7.00). Tickets for Under 25s and Students are £4.00 and can be purchased at the York Theatre Royal Box Office or by calling 01904 623568 or by booking online at www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk . Ends **************************