Adapting a book to a play is challenge. Adapting a trilogy to a two hour drama is even more so but that’s what playwright Nicholas Wright has done with, Pat Barker’s Regeneration, a three part novel on the madness of war set in the time of WW1.
At the core of the play, set in Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart War Hospital, is the relationship between established poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon (Tim Delap) and Army Psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers (Stephen Boxer). Rivers job is to treat shell-shocked officers so they can return to the front. During their sessions together, Rivers take on his task shifts. Alongside, aspiring poet Wilfred Owen (Garmon Rhys) develops a relationship with Sassoon based on their common love of poetry and their shared homosexuality.
When a professional soldier like Sassoon who was known as Mad Jack for his cavalier approach can deliver the damning words that had him sent to Craiglockhart rather than be court martialled it is surely testament to the madness of war not madness in the man.
"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”
Sassoon could express it in words but others chose muteness. The cruel and inhumane processing of men suffering from shell shock now known as post- traumatic stress disorder is harrowing to watch and while Dr Rivers’ Freudian methods are more humane to the officer class, it still had as its goal of making soldiers fit for combat again.
Against the panelled wood set that was distempered like a cold white dawn, other issues are played out. Loud sounds of strings, drums and guns accompany the brisk shifting from consulting room to hospital ward to the meeting of a military board. Lights soften the panels to warm wood for the setting of the Conservative club that helps point up the deeply veined class consciousness of the day with which the play is ridden.
There is a stiffness in some of the acting, but that could be reflecting the period and style of the piece. In contrast, Jack Monaghan captured beautifully the uneducated man/boy officer Billy Prior, who confesses to a strange eroticism at war when his muteness passes. David Morley Hale excels in all three roles and Lindy Whiteford is consummate as the Ward Sister. Tim Delap as Sassoon himself and Stephen Boxer as the thoughtful stammering doctor show the symbiotic relationship between two very different men with considerable skill.
This is a very human testament to the results of the horrors of war where acts of love can still abound.
age recommend 14+
Tuesday 30 September to Saturday 4 October 2014
tour continues