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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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All pals together on the Somme
The Accrington Pals
Hall Green Little Theatre
****
PALS battalions was Lord Kitchener’s cunning wheeze to replenish the
dwindling supplies of cannon fodder as the stream of willing volunteers
started to dwindle. The idea
was simple, encourage all the eligible
men from a town or
district to join up as a big gang, a load of mates off on a jolly.
Mayors and local worthies were recruited as recruiting officers, pushing
patriotism with, at no extra charge, the new added ingredient of civic
pride. It was almost a competition between towns and their corporations. The fact the resulting
recruits would all be neighbours, workmates, relatives and so on, in the
minds of the authorities, meant they would have more loyalty to each
other, their regiment and, most important, the country who needed them It also had the advantage that
peer pressure would drag along the shirkers, backsliders and doubters. It also meant that with the
soldiers of a battalion all being from the same town, same schools, same
streets, then when the regular massacres of the Western Front occurred,
the deaths, grief and losses were concentrated and felt on those same
towns, schools, streets. Whole communities were devastated. While the likes of R C
Sherriff’s Journey’s End looks at life on the front lines, Peter
Whelan’s play of 1982 concentrates on life back home in the Lancashire
mill town of Accrington, among the women left behind. Strongest of these is May,
played
She never manages to tell her
younger would be boy-friend Tom that she loves him until it is too late. Tom, played by Daniel Robert
Beaton, is a bit of a dreamer, full of radical, left wing ideas, helping
May in his spare time away from being an apprentice lithographic artist.
May tries desperately to
prevent his recruitment only running into the brick wall of CSM Rivers,
played by James Weetman. Rivers speaks with a silver tongue but marches
to the official tune, although perhaps more than most, he knows what is
in store. Tom’s big friend is Ralph,
played by Matt Ludlam with a jack-the-lad air, who is having an
accelerated passionate, but inevitably short affair with Eva, who comes
along to help May when Tom goes off to war. Eva, played by Samantha
Michaela Lawson, perhaps shows most the change in sexual attitudes
during the war when the threat of imminent death was more important to
relationships than the social mores that had kept respectable
girls chaste, but never caught as one might say, before the outbreak of
war and the ensuing carnage. Third of the trio of men from
our own little patch of Accrington is Arthur, a man of God and pigeons,
who sees the hand of the Lord in everything. Jon Richardson gives him a
pious air of naivety as he heads off to war with his favourite homing
pigeon. His wife is Annie, played
beautifully by Jean Wilde. She is finding coping hard and constantly
berates her son Reggie, played with a mischievous air by Luke Ellinor
from the Youth Theatre. Reggie is just being a boy but
Annie struggles with that, seeing everything in terms of him being
naughty which brings at least one terrible beating. Of all the women
left behind she finds it most difficult to cope, suffering a nervous
breakdown where she has to rely on the son she had spent all her time
criticizing. Then there is Bertha, a tram
conductor as women take on men’s roles, played by Charlotte Crowe, who
takes the risqué step of raising the hem on her uniform skirt to . . .
above the ankle. Horses must have been frightened in the street. Bertha is shy and reserved,
unlike her friend, the flirty, flighty, fun Sarah, played by Rachel
Louise Pickard, who sees no reason why the women left behind should not
enjoy themselves and she even takes the place of men with unladylike
language and comments, at least unladylike for the time. We all know what is going to
happen. There is inevitability about it all. If everyone was going to
live happily ever after there would not have been much point to the
play. But the way the tale unfolds
does cause its own problems. It is very episodic, 10 scenes in act one
and eight in the second act, and even keeping the design simple, which
director and designer Roy Palmer has done, it still means there is a
constant stop start which inhibits the pace and interrupts the natural
rhythm. Palmer has effective split the
stage into three scenes, the veg stall at one side, a table and hearth
at the other with an open space in the middle for any other scenes, such
as Sara’s back yard as she hung out the washing, or Ralph’s soak in
t’tin bath in t’front o’t’ fire, complete with wooden boat, showing
perhaps Ralph was still a big kid when he went off to war. The cast made a decent fist of
a They kept it simple, without
going too broad and simplicity was the key, particularly with the
setting.
Anything too elaborate and
changes would take too long, as it was, the key elements - the splendid
fruit and veg stall, and its squeaky cart, and May’s sitting room – were
the constant fixtures around which the main story revolved. Anything outside that had the
freedom of the stage. Particularly effective was May’s pleadings with
the now dead Rivers and Tom, she in a single spot, they in ghostly blue
lights above the stage. Palmer has kept the momentum
moving along, despite the relentless scene changes, and, with first
night successfully put to bed, no doubt the pace and scene changes will
quicken. There are some fine
performances by a splendid cast and it is a fitting tribute to the men
of the Pal’s battalions who fought and died in France. The battalions were raised
around the land, Leeds, Hull, Barnsley, Manchester . . . 142 locally
raised battalions, along with a further 68 local reserve battalions. Accrington was the smallest
town to raise a battalion, formed by the Mayor. A quarter of the men were from
the town with the rest from the surrounding towns and villages such as
Burnley, Blackburn and Chorley. On the first day of the Battle
of the Somme, 1 July 1916, the Accrington Pals, the 11th
Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, advanced at walking pace, as they
had been criminally ordered, to be mown down by German troops who were
supposed to have been killed or incapacitated by a huge bombardment. The
walking advance, ordered because there would be no resistance, just
provided target practice for the largely unscathed Germans. About 700 untried and
unprepared Pals advanced and 585 became casualties, 235 killed and 350
wounded. The Pals had been wiped out. In all 865 men from the town were
eventually to die in the conflict, more than 2 per cent of the
population. The national average was l.5 per cent. Of the 100,000 who advanced
that day 21,000 died and 35,000 were injured – not one of them was a
General. Whelan’s play tells of just
three who died that day and the effect their deaths had at home.
Perhaps audiences are becoming war weary but this deserves better ticket
sales than opening night. To 07-02-15 Roger Clarke
30-01-15 |
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superbly
by Lauren McCarron, who knows everyone in the district as they all pass
and buy at her fruit and veg stall.
Lanky accent, sithee, although a couple of times it might have been from
parts of God’s own country which have still to be discovered, but it was
consistent and, speaking as a born and bred Lancastrian, it were
passable.