Blackeyed Theatre, a five-man ensemble of Robert Harding, Ben Harrison, Joseph Mann, Paul Morse and Tom Neill, performed the Joan Littlewood classic First World War expose, Oh What a Lovely War, directed and produced by Adrian McDougall, at the Bedford School Theatre on Monday, October 3.
Having seen the show in its first West End run in 1963, I would agree with Brian Murphy (an original cast member) that this is ‘a splendid revival that does the original production proud.’ I only remember the late John Gower and Avis Bunnage from that show, but the lessons that politicians are liars, generals fight the previous war and the poor bloody infantry bears the brunt of conflict have stayed with me ever since.
Of course the show, which draws on personal memoirs, music hall and wartime songs, and newspaper articles to present a profoundly pessimistic view of the ‘war to end wars,’ is in one sense a naive piece of left-wing propaganda. Its theme is that capitalism causes and prolongs wars, and it conveniently omits the fact that Socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, have been among the most militaristic in history. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Easter Rising in Dublin are mentioned only amongst the headlines flashed up on the screen at the back of the stage throughout the performance, most of which relate to the horrendous casualties suffered by the opposing sides amidst the carnage on the Western Front.
The five-man cast took all the parts of ordinary Tommies, French soldiers, brass-hats, music hall performers, war profiteers and civilians, and played a variety of musical instruments with great skill. Unlike the original ‘end of the pier show’ cast, they wore a modified pierrot costume of waistcoats with pom-poms for buttons, over shirts and trousers, augmented by military tunics and caps. The main deficiency was the absence of a female cast member: a bloke in a frock is just not the same. Quick costume changes were made easier by draping the garments over a row of white crosses at the back of the stage.
The villain of the show is Field Marshal Haig, with his messianic vision of a ‘final push’ that will overwhelm the ‘demoralised’ enemy, but never does. In the ball scene, where the cast of generals danced with dresses on crosses to symbolise their wives, Haig was shown conspiring to supplant his predecessor as commander-in-chief, Sir John French. The cast couldn’t have known that French was a local hero in Bedford, where his sister-in-law lived: he received the Freedom of the Borough in 1901. French and Haig were dashing cavalry commanders in the Boer War, who could beat armed colonials, but fighting a well-equipped European army was a very different matter.
All the cast articulated their lines well, and the only shouting was what was required in the script – the shrilly incomprehensible drill sergeant, training the raw recruits to bayonet the enemy, was just one of the highlights of an excellent performance. Oh What a Lovely War is on tour until the end of November. www.blackeyedtheatre.co.uk
BY RICHARD WILDMAN
