Toddington
September 2018
****
Theatre's Joy, Accrington's Sorrow
Being
a man of a certain age I have seen a lot of War Memorials in my time. Through
the length and breadth of this country the smallest hamlets and towns and
villages all have them. It humbles you to see the long list of names from World
War One, in even the tiniest of places. I have never been to Accrington, famous
for its Stanley football team and its wartime Pals, but I reckon their war
memorial must be amongst the biggest and most awe inspiring. Over 700 of their
young men signed up for Kitchener’s army and nearly 600 of them lost their
lives in one of the twentieth
century’s bloodiest battles. The Battle of the
Somme, 1st July 1916. The ‘Pals’ recruitment policy was soon
ditched. The downside of a community going to war together was the desolate whirlwind
created in the town left behind.
Peter
Whelan captures all this, poetically and beautifully, in his small scale
telling of the tale of a town which went to war and, tragically, inscribed its
name forever on the British memory. The
Accrington Pals encapsulates those men in the Tom and Arthur and Ralph of
his dramatisation but also, even more, paints a tender and realistic picture of
their women. As someone much cleverer than me said, he could have just as
easily called his play The Accrington Gals. They it was who had to pick up the
pieces when passions and hopes of a wasted generation lay dead on a foreign
field. This play is Oh What a Lovely War
writ small and telling. And it packs, especially at the end, a similar punch.
The
gritty May has unspoken love for her younger cousin, the idealistic and
introspective Tom. The sensitive Eva yearns and succumbs to the cheerful charms
of irrepressible Ralph. And pious Arthur takes up gun and God to escape the
acerbic Annie. Or that’s how I read it. Mix in the sexually liberated Sarah and
the jolly and comic Bertha, splendidly attired as a bus conductress, with
unseen and unsatisfactory beaus and small town lives engagingly focus against
the backdrop of a devastating war that devoured the innocents. These men knew
not to what they willingly marched.
The
ensemble playing did not totally please, I wanted more pace and vigour in early
scenes, and a couple of the players lacked that essential inner truth to
completely engage the small town life. But where they did in Jenna Kay’s
directorial debut we were given some cracking performances. Tracey Chatterley
was a superb no nonsense May, conscious both of duty and denied emotional
fulfilment, Joe Hawkins (Ralph) a delightfully uplifting man of pleasure, and
Iain Grant (Tom) a sensitive artist destined to have ideals and body bloodily
destroyed. My small caveat with Mr Grant is that this ageing critic wished for
more projection in his quieter scenes. A criticism I also directed at Connie
Wiltshire’s eminently watchable Eva. You felt for this cuckoo in May’s domestic
nest, her expressions oozed emotion, but some of her lines were lost.
But
overall, especially in a vigorous second act filled with consummate sound and
lighting effects from Paul Horsler and Josh Halsey, the production generally
pleased. Jennifer McDonald was a telling Bertha, an emancipated girl who could
not love a man who stayed at home, Claire Moore a nicely dirty minded Sarah, Andrew
Naish an especially impressive bible thumping Arthur, and Nathaniel Chatterley
a convincing ragamuffin constantly avoiding his mother’s stick. The young Mr
Chatterley’s stage timing would put some older hands to shame.
Director
Jenna Kay sang the two evocative songs beautifully and the second,
counterpointing the harrowing end scenes depicted, softened even the hardest theatrical
heart. Miss Kay shows much promise as a director. I may have quibbled at some
of her narrative scenes but fine individual acting coupled with the quiet and
still intensity of the final war strewn tableau will long remain in the
memory. I have directed over fifty plays. Jenna Kay’s ending of The Accrington Pals eclipsed much. It makes
you muse over that late night introspective whisky. Theatre, like wars, relies
so much on the promise of the young. Theatre’s joy. Accrington’s sorrow.
Roy Hall
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