Anthem For A Doomed Youth

In simpler times when the internet was a mere dream and a typewriter would have left people wide eyed, it was easier for governments to recruit gullible young men by simply masquerading war as something exciting.

But Wilfred Owen, Auden, and their inspired successor, Philip Larkin - born in the shadow of The Great War - put paid to that notion, with realistic verse that documented the true horrors of arm to arm combat among WWI soldiers from all sides.

Last night I genuinely wept as part of a deathly, silent audience, which felt the emotional power of An August Bank Holiday Lark unfold in the main auditorium of the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Based on Larkin's 1964 poem, MCMXIV, I couldn't help but feel like a perverse voyeur momentarily sharing the lives of a simple Lancashire community, whose highpoint of the year was the annual rushbearing festival.

Act One so beautifully paints the simplicity of their lives where a cockerel's spoiling of someone's flower bed is a near tragedy, and an inappropriate cuddle might well have warranted a swift reprimand from the vicar.

But, in and amongst the flower beds of naivety, there was a foreboding because WE knew what was coming. It's 1914 and the war of all wars is just around the corner. It would be over quickly and everyone would be home by Christmas.

Only it wasn't and, as Act II unfolded, we were taken on a journey of perverse sadness as young men died, lives were left shattered and people quickly realised that a spoilt flowerbed was no longer important.

Deborah McAndrew wrote it and Barry Rutter, as John Farrar the Squire, both starred in and directed this wholesome, lyrical, beautiful piece of theatre, that doesn't so much tug at the heart strings as rip them screaming from your chest.

A joint production between Northern Broadsides and the New Vic Theatre, An August Bank Holiday Lark is a timely reminder of the horrors of war. "We have to win or we'll have died for nothing," says one of the characters, as if that were a reason to continue the fight. And don't we hear such words - albeit re-packaged - time and again?

This was a strong, articulate cast, momentarily rooted in a war struck north west community, so believable, so tragic. As Mary (Emily Butterfield) meets her one legged soldier husband - once the best dancer in town - in an Army hospital, one wonders how the wife of Simon Weston must have felt as her man returned after the Falklands War. Some things never change.

This is drama at its best and every politician in the land should book a ticket. If they did they might be a little more sparing with the rhetoric, and a little more generous with their words of conciliation.

Remember any of those commandments that didn't make the top 10? Thou shalt not steal.................the Crimean Peninsula. I believe Ukrainian tanks are now on the way.

Politicians, who'd 'av 'em.

Until April 19th 2014

Click here for our interview with Deborah McAndrew, the writer of An August Bank Holiday Lark

Click here for another review of this splendid play