| Sensitive Production for Armistice Weekend |
At Frapetsus |
| Frapetsus Productions- Not About Heroes , Wyeside Arts Centre , November 14, 2011 |
In between heats three and four of their script writing competition the energetic Frapetsus company mounted a reprise of their production of Stephen MacDonald's two-hander about Great War poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Mid-way between Swansea and Denbigh, November 11th itself saw it at Builth Wells. Stephen MacDonald’s script has an intelligent structure, in which the relationship between the two poets changes over the course of the friendship. They meet in 1917, in tentative manner, at Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart Hospital for nervous diseases. Sassoon, a decorated war hero, has been sent there to silence his protest against the war. The difference in background is considerable. Sassoon is member of a wealthy banking dynasty, the family home now a campus for the University of Middlesex. From his opening line Jack Llewellyn gives him the voice of privilege and command. There is a conventional representation of received pronunciation. Jack Llewellyn pushes it a whole stage further, so that a word like “hope” becomes “hey-ope.” This tone of emotional restraint gives depth to a fine sustained performance. Tom McCleod’s Wilfred Owen by contrast, son of a Shropshire railway superintendant, has at the time of meeting not a line of published verse to his name. When the time comes and the quality of his poetry is right, Sassoon declares it should be published in the hospital journal. Owen protests that he cannot do it as he is its editor. “Do it” orders Sassoon. It is the command of the officer class. In Craiglockart Tom McCleod has a quiver of the lip, a shaking hand and difficulty with certain consonants. In the second act the apprentice poet has become the master. Thanks to Sassoon, Owen has been introduced to the literary set. He makes mention of Robert Ross, H G Wells and Max Beerbohm. He has been at the wedding of Robert Graves. The turn-around in the relationship is underpinned visually. Sassoon is in a wheelchair after a second wound to the head. Owen meanwhile is torn, probing himself for courage. The need to test himself makes a return to the front inevitable. Sassoon reads from the letters that attest to his leadership and the respect of his men. The death occurs a week to the day before the signing of the Armistice. The bells of celebration are already ringing in Shrewsbury before Owen’s family is in receipt of the fateful news. As befits the subject matter “Not About Heroes” is sober, but it is not sombre. The script has the occasional quip. Robert Graves is the kind of personality “you like better after he has left the room.” In form, it mixes dialogue, letters home and the reading of the verse. A centre of the first act is Sassoon’s strong critique of Owen’s versifying, forcing on him improvements in metre, more potent alliteration. For the title of one of Owen’s two best-known poems “dead” is amended. The title becomes “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” The Wyeside is not a small space, but it is well filled by the set. A heavy period desk, chairs of the same vintage, a trunk are spread out across the stage. But it is the words that fill the theatre, however meagre they may be against the enormity of the war. The strength is not just the part that has been distilled into poetry but the sharp observation of those reporting from the front line. In the bitterness of winter Sassoon speaks of “the fear of eyeballs freezing over.” Stephen MacDonald captures some of the truth of loss. Of a young friend shot in the throat “I wrote about him” says Sassoon “to keep him alive a bit longer.” Of Owen “too much of myself went with him.” Whether it is their words or those of the author, there is a simple elegiac truth to “Compassion is all there is.” Bethan Thomas directs. Jack McCleod as stage manager sounds remarkably like an amalgam of the two players. Frapetsus is becoming one of the most interesting of the new Welsh companies. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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