search
date/time
Yorkshire Times
A Voice of the Free Press
frontpagebusinessartscarslifestylefamilytravelsportsscitechnaturefictionCartoons
Phil Hopkins
Group Travel Editor & Theatre Correspondent
@philhopkinsuk
2:56 PM 13th May 2015
arts

Lest We Forget, Birdsong Won't Let Us

 
Last Saturday a Lieutenant Colonel from the Danish Army urged me to visit London's Imperial War Museum which I duly did. It was an interactive feast that lacked little except for blood, death, guts and the feeling you only get when standing next to a dead body.

How quickly brutal reality becomes history and how pressured curators must feel to make even our sick past 'fun for the kids'. Will theatre be one of the few bastions of the future still powerful enough to stop man from repeating his past follies? Let's hope so.

Rachel Wagstaff's stage version of Sebastian Faulks' novel, Birdsong, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, was a truly moving piece that left me welling up at the sorrow of lost lives, lost love and the loss of a generation ravaged by War and the imperialistic greed of fighting nations.

This production so beautifully captures the contrasts of British life - on the one hand the everyday Tommies who are the mainstay of the trenches, and on the other the public schoolboy officers who, despite horrendous conditions, do their utmost to maintain a stiff upper lip.

It catalogues the life of Officer Stephen Wraysford and his pre-war love for French woman, Isabelle Azaire, trapped in a worthless marriage. They run off together, she gets pregnant, doesn't tell him but does a moonlight flit, wracked by the guilt of her infidelity.

The War intervenes and he manages to stay alive somehow buoyed by Isabelle's memory and his desperate desire to see her again and to seek answers.



Wagstaff's play reaches to the very bowel of your emotional store. Set in the trenches of the First World War as troops prepare for the final push, filling their days with mail, food and friendly banter, it moves little beyond its tight backdrop of barbed wire, tunnels and enemy fire, but still articulates a lifetime of emotion.

Edmund Wiseman as Wraysford was utterly convincing and Emily Bowker as Isabelle, suitably French, and totally withheld until overcome by restrained passion for the man who lights her inner soul.

Director, Alastair Whatley's, staging was masterful and he has to be applauded for the way he seamlessly wove past and present together with clever stage craft and simple but highly effective direction.

Dark, moody and foreboding, Birdsong could not have worked as well as it did without Victoria Spearing's wonderful set and the evocative moods of Alex Wardle's lighting design......the behind the scene people are often the unsung heroes.


But, supported by this holistic theatrical team, Whatley was able to deliver a masterpiece which, for me, is a must see for anyone who is a true theatre lover. This is one of those productions that will be remembered, not for its 'stars' but for its sheer humanity.

Oh yes I almost forgot, I'm going to Vienna soon. Can't wait to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand's jacket. It's still got the bullet hole in it which triggered the start of the First World War. Wow. It'll be amazing and great fun I'm sure!

Until May 23rd (2015)
Birdsong
West Yorkshire Playhouse
Stars 7.30pm