Great war plays out in grand promenade
dramaturg Angie Farrow, director Hannah Smith; Coleman Place and Central Library, Palmerston North, October 6-7. Reviewed by Richard Mays.
A khaki-clad soldier lies dead in Coleman Place. An audience gathers in front of the impromptu proscenium arch formed by Anton Parsons’
Numbers sculpture. We are about to experience a period performance on a grand scale.
Dressed in red, and representing poppies, an a capella chorus sings over the body. We learn it is October 1919, a year after the Armistice that ended the Great War. The soldier appears to revive. His wife recognises him as Jack, and claims him. But something is not right. Jack, played by Cam Dickons, is bewildered and mute.
His ‘‘conchie coward’’ brother berates him for going to war despite their pact not to do so. Flags are handed out and the audience joins a victory march down Coleman Place into George St and to the library steps. There are more claimants for Jack. He has a mother, a sister, acquaintances, a trenchmate from the Pioneer Battalion. But now there are questions about Jack’s fortitude and mental state.
‘‘How dare he come back from the war with nothing,’’ comes a call. The audience is getting the hang of this promenade performance, and we’re off again into the George St library entrance where Jack gets electro-convulsive therapy, and on to Events Central where period artefacts from Jack’s memory are displayed along with multiple scenic projections which erupt into a full-scale immersive Great War battle scene.
Firing Line may be a simple story, but its scope is brilliantly ambitious. With director Hannah Smith from Wellington’s Trick of the Light Theatre at the helm, its many processional and fixed elements are successfully combined to make a satisfyingly epic, engaging and impactful whole.