Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
These men too are the ghosts conjured up by old Kenneth Pyper, the regiment's sole survivor of its final battle, who wakes as if from a nightmare at the start of the play and ushers his former comrades to would-be triumph at its end. Inbetween, Pyper's effete aesthete holds court to a role-call of Belfast tough guys, failed preachers and others caught in the crossfire and desperate for something to believe in, if only each other. For young Pyper, played with a mix of foppish charm and vulnerability by Donal Gallery, that belief comes in the form of Ryan Donaldson's David Craig.
Their fellow cannon fodder too cling to each other for comfort in this slow-burning collaboration between the Citizens, Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Headlong and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.
Four stars
When the eight squaddies fighting for
king and country swap Protestant sashes before going into battle
towards the end of Frank McGuinness' 1985 play, revived here by
Jeremy Herrin, it resemblance a victorious football team swapping
shirts with their noble opponents. Such an image speaks volumes about
McGuinness' mighty meditation on maleness in all its troubled forms.
By this stage the World War One volunteers have moved from act one's
peacockish barrack room sparring to become a unit who would die for
each other, with everything that really matters between them left
painfully unsaid.
These men too are the ghosts conjured up by old Kenneth Pyper, the regiment's sole survivor of its final battle, who wakes as if from a nightmare at the start of the play and ushers his former comrades to would-be triumph at its end. Inbetween, Pyper's effete aesthete holds court to a role-call of Belfast tough guys, failed preachers and others caught in the crossfire and desperate for something to believe in, if only each other. For young Pyper, played with a mix of foppish charm and vulnerability by Donal Gallery, that belief comes in the form of Ryan Donaldson's David Craig.
Their fellow cannon fodder too cling to each other for comfort in this slow-burning collaboration between the Citizens, Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Headlong and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.
Peppered with drum-beats throughout and
set against the stunning scarlet skies of lighting designer Paul
Keogan, Herrin's production has taken a genuinely brave piece of
writing and made something that is both elegiac
and heroic in every way.
The Herald, May 27th 2016
ends
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