With Remembrance Day coming up, it’s salutary to be offered this chance to reflect upon war’s impact on the families of our armed forces.
Director Steve Gilroy and his excellent four-strong cast from the Live Theatre, Newcastle, interviewed a number of wives and mothers of those on active service, and have edited the testimonies into a largely affecting patchwork of unshowy stoicism.
The strength of the piece lies in the warm evocation of the everyday, reminding us that the Army — that increasingly abstract noun we hear too often and reflect upon too little — isn’t something that simply happens "over there" as a depressing statistic on faraway foreign soil.
That’s why, for instance, the tiny details of the Cretan holiday on which the two Joannes meet their young soldier boyfriends matter so much.
Even so, compassion fatigue does begin to set in after a certain number of stories, and individual details blur. As if in tacit acknowledgment of this, Gilroy unnecessarily employs a few modish directorial tricks, and by the time we learn — gosh — that Bush and Blair have blood on their hands, this particular viewer longed to buy a poppy and make her escape.
Until 7 November (020 7240 6283,
www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk).
Motherland
Tristan Bates Theatre, The Actors Centre
Tower Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 9NP
