There's something faintly ironic about the title of this
acclaimed play in which five Britons recall their experiences of The Great War.
After all, the global bloodbath of 1914-18 is unrivalled in the amount of
cultural artifacts it has inspired, all of which, in some way, give voice to
the experiences of those involved. So the challenge in going over such
well-trodden ground must surely be to construct a satisfying drama, which I’m
afraid it doesn’t quite manage.
The play itself is consciously spare. As you'd expect of a
play about voices, it foregrounds a highly literate text which affords roughly
equal temporal and physical space to the narratives of four of the five
characters. Of these, it is Belinda Lang's war widow and Rupert Frazer’s posh
officer who most engage. Frazer’s almost courtly body language is especially
finely observed in contrast with the rather more bluff poses of the lower-ranked
men. Lang, too, lends her character a touching frailty that is nonetheless
laced with passion remembered from her youth.
Where the play falls down, though, is in the lack of tension
onstage. In making what must have been a conscious decision to choose voices
that represent a cross-section of war survivors, the playwright might then have
gone on to exploit conflicts of class or ideology amongst the group – but he
hasn’t. Of course, it could be that the desire to maintain a close fidelity to
the actual words that are on record is behind this decision, but, respect for
the subject matter aside, the play ultimately fails to convince as drama.
Times: 12 noon, 2 - 27 August