Quite a few years ago GSMD introduced me to a Noel Coward play called Peace in Our Time, set in an occupied London at the end of the Second World War; the Nazis had won. Now they are introducing me to another rare Coward, an anti-war play set during and after the First World War. It’s a fascinating piece and it’s given a stunning production.
Coward wrote it in 1930, after being deeply affected by performing in R C Sheriff’s Journey’s End, another First World War play. He published it but decided it was too bitter to stage. It’s first performance took place in a PoW camp in Austria in 1944, where the prisoners included four professional actors. It was first seen here in 1968, on TV, and not until 1992 on stage, when it had its first production at the Kings Head Theatre. That was 25 years ago and its baffling that no-one has staged it since. Coward is known for comedy and songs, so in a blind test you probably wouldn’t guess correctly, though the dialogue does have his voice.
We start in the trenches with five very different officers. Cavan swaps watch with Robbins and is killed. At that moment, he becomes a ghostly presence back home where thirteen years have passed. He visits his mother, his former girlfriend, his newspaper baron father (a thinly disguised snipe at the Daily Mail) and his former army colleagues. The war has made nothing better and some things worse. When his time is up, we return to the trenches as he’s stretchered away. There’s one final moving moment at a war memorial.
William Dudley’s projection tunnel is extraordinary, enabling them to move to seven very different locations in two time periods, which helps Lucy Bailey’s staging flow so beautifully. Tom Glenister is excellent as Cavan, on stage throughout, and there’s a particularly fine performance from Nicholas Armfield as tortured Lomas, who writes a book after the war which Cavan’s dad’s newspaper riles against. In fact, the whole ensemble of twenty-five is outstanding.
Well worth reviving, in a matchless production. Only three more days.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 
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