Kings Theatre, Edinburgh
3 stars
When John Wilson’s play about the trial and execution of a Passchendaele deserter in 1917 premiered in 1964 starring John Hurt, the anti-war movement was about to go global. Yet this was no voguish piece of sloganeering, but rather a quietly austere dissection of how the army look after their own with cold inhumanity if they deviate from duty. No wonder such flint-eyed bleakness appealed to film director Joseph Losey, who cast Dirk Bogarde as the posh but humane lawyer attempting to save a runtish Tom Courtenay from the gallows. Class division and the ambiguities of loyalty, after all, were something of his raison d’etre.
Class counts too in Tristram Powell’s new touring production of the play, which moves from a bombed-out shack barely sheltering anyone from the blast to runaway squaddie Arthur Hamp’s court martial and back over Wilson’s three short acts. Such a juxtaposition between settings only serves to point up that, while it may not be a mud-bath, the make-shift trial is where the dirtiest war of all is played out.
As slow-witted Arthur, made incontinent with fear by the war but so honest he effectively digs his own grave, Adam Gillen’s glaikit boy-soldier who only wanted to walk home could be a shell-shocked casualty caught in the crossfire of more contemporary battlefields. While the officer class show off a range of emotions, from snobbish superiority to articulate empathy and guilt at the duty they’re tethered to, for all its understatement, there is a danger of polarising things too much. In the end, it’s only because Arthur can’t remember what he was told to do that causes his saddest of downfalls.
The Herald, April 2nd 2009
ends
3 stars
When John Wilson’s play about the trial and execution of a Passchendaele deserter in 1917 premiered in 1964 starring John Hurt, the anti-war movement was about to go global. Yet this was no voguish piece of sloganeering, but rather a quietly austere dissection of how the army look after their own with cold inhumanity if they deviate from duty. No wonder such flint-eyed bleakness appealed to film director Joseph Losey, who cast Dirk Bogarde as the posh but humane lawyer attempting to save a runtish Tom Courtenay from the gallows. Class division and the ambiguities of loyalty, after all, were something of his raison d’etre.
Class counts too in Tristram Powell’s new touring production of the play, which moves from a bombed-out shack barely sheltering anyone from the blast to runaway squaddie Arthur Hamp’s court martial and back over Wilson’s three short acts. Such a juxtaposition between settings only serves to point up that, while it may not be a mud-bath, the make-shift trial is where the dirtiest war of all is played out.
As slow-witted Arthur, made incontinent with fear by the war but so honest he effectively digs his own grave, Adam Gillen’s glaikit boy-soldier who only wanted to walk home could be a shell-shocked casualty caught in the crossfire of more contemporary battlefields. While the officer class show off a range of emotions, from snobbish superiority to articulate empathy and guilt at the duty they’re tethered to, for all its understatement, there is a danger of polarising things too much. In the end, it’s only because Arthur can’t remember what he was told to do that causes his saddest of downfalls.
The Herald, April 2nd 2009
ends
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