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Wars in the mind of poets
Regeneration
Wolverhampton Grand
**** BY chance there
was an added poignancy to the Press night performance of Nicholas
Wright’s adaptation of Pat Barker’s best selling novel – it was the 96th
anniversary of the death of one of main characters of the drama, Wilfred
Owen. Owen died on 4 November, one week, almost to the
very hour, that the armistice was signed to end hostilities, and a day
before his promotion to lieutenant came through. His mother learned of
his death as the church bells rang out on Armistice Day. He had been
awarded the Military Cross for leading an action a month earlier. Owen was a secondary character to his mentor
Siegfried Sassoon who he met in Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh,
a hospital for psychologically damaged officers, and the setting for the
play. Owen was suffering from shell shock, Sassoon from
politics. Sassoon, Marlborough and Cambridge, was awarded the MC in 1916
and although his men felt safe only in his hands, they called him Mad
Jack because of his own suicidal exploits of bravery. The “illness” which saw him sent to the officers’
mental hospital was a letter, A soldier’s declaration, which he
sent to his commanding officer as a soldier on behalf of soldiers saying
he would no longer obey orders because the war was being prolonged
unnecessarily. That could have been hushed up, except copies had
also
been sent to his friends, his MP and newspapers. It could have been a
cause for charges of cowardice, disobeying orders or worse, with
imprisonment or even death at the end of it – a fate the Army did not
want for one of its officer class, nor did it want its conduct of the
war examined too closely in public. So an intervention by Sassoon’s well connected
friend Robert Graves with the explanation Sassoon had merely suffered a
breakdown was accepted gratefully and Sassoon was shipped off to
Edinburgh out of the limelight. Tim Delap gives us a Sassoon who is
sophisticated, educated, articulate and confident in all he does, even
in his decision to return to France, despite his views of the running of
the war, when he could have served out his time behind a desk, In Delap
we had a Sassoon we could believe in.
His doctor and sparring partner was Captain
William Rivers, a Craiglockhart psychiatrist, beautifully played by
Stephen Boxer in a performance full of compassion, feeling and, with a
twinkle, some gentle humour to lift the gloom. Garmon Rhys who plays the young Owen, a budding
poet in awe of Sassoon, is in his first professional role after
graduating from LAMDA this summer, not that you would have known it.
This was a confident performance full of shades of emotion from hero
worship to blazing anger. Rivers and the two poets, along with Graves were
real characters at the hospital and then we have Jack Monaghan as Billy
Prior, a complete fiction as a north country working class officer with
a chip on his shoulder and a voice that had been silenced by the horrors
he saw. Like Sassoon, he found verbal sparring with Rivers was his
salvation as he recovered his voice and his mind. Lindy Whiteford kept everyone in order as Sister
Rogers while we met a motley collection of damaged officers who saw
spies everywhere, could not eat, or speak or walk when there was no
physical reason, or had fictional wives who could never quite manage a
visit. The book, and through it the play, is a fictional
account, admittedly based upon letters and first person accounts to add
historical context, but it is an interesting examination of the dilemmas
that might have faced Sassoon and Owen and it does give an idea of both
the horrors both sides experienced in the First World War and the effect
on the mind. It suffers a little at the beginning from being a
little episodic with some scenes managing only a couple of lines, but
once the scene has been set, the changes settle down to a more relaxed
pace as the different threads intertwine. Directed by Simon Godwin the play develops a
pleasing rhythm aided by some very slick scene changes involving at
various times the entire staff of 12. Alex Eales setting is wonderfully
flexible, aided by Lee Curran’s lighting, giving a hospital ward, dining
room, Edinburgh bar, Rivers’ office and brutal London hospital treatment
room and finally the quiet and serene Chelsea Physic Garden. A mention too for Richard Pinner who devised a
very simple, but clever and effective illusion and sound designer George
Dennis who managed to shock everyone with the explosive sounds of war
and madness. I must confess I have never read Pat Barker’s
book so can only judge the play on its theatrical merit and on that
basis it stands smartly on its own two feet - Sir! It is not a sort of
Pat Barker tribute act but very much a play making its own way in the
world creating an interesting evening with another view of the war to
end all wars. To 08-11-14 Roger Clarke 04-11-14
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